A Santa Clara County family is suing two South Bay mortuaries and a licensed funeral director after an alleged mistake—a horrifying, disgusting mistake.
According to the recently filed lawsuit, the family of Alexander Pinon claims that a funeral home employee gave Pinon’s father a red biohazard bag supposedly containing his son’s clothing. He allegedly then opened the bag to find a portion of his son’s brain.
As reported by San Francisco’s KRON4, the suit names Lima family Erickson Memorial Chapel in San Jose, along with Lima family Santa Clara mortuary, and funeral director Annette “Anita” Singh, accusing them all of mishandling human remains and causing severe emotional distress.
Pinon died in May inside a Santa Clara home. His mother signed a contract worth more than $10,000 for a full-service funeral package that included embalming, dressing, transportation, and burial. Before the service, the family decided to dress him in different clothing. On June 4, Pinon’s dad went to the mortuary to pick up the original clothes and got his son’s brain instead.
Father Says Funeral Home Gave Him His Son’s Brain in a Bag
According to the lawsuit, the father was handed a red bag labeled as biohazardous material. Singh told the father that it contained clothing. When he took it home, he opened the bag and dumped its contents, sight unseen, into the washing machine, only to discover that it wasn’t clothes that fell out but brain matter.
The family says they were not informed that a coroner had conducted a cranial autopsy and removed part of Pinon’s brain. The dad had no idea what had fallen out of the bag, so he scooped up the contents out of the washing machine and put them back before returning it to the funeral director the same day.
The lawsuit alleges that the family never received an explanation for what happened or the clothing they had requested. Allegedly, the brain matter was reportedly left in the bag and hidden in a courtyard at the funeral home for weeks.
Attorneys for the family say the incident has scarred them for life, causing a range of issues from trauma, anxiety, and nightmares. The family’s lawsuit alleges negligence, fraud, breach of contract, and infliction of emotional distress.
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