Widower files lawsuit after wife's casket surfaces during flood

[Zight]

Source: KHOU

HOUSTON - One week after flood waters lifted the coffin of a Houston woman from an historic African American cemetery, a widower has filed suit demanding better cooperation from the church and the funeral home to put his re-lived nightmare to rest.

A coffin containing the remains of Carolyn Joyce Fobbs-Lee rose to the surface last Tuesday morning at Riceville Cemetery along Keegans Bayou in southwest Houston. The flood carried the coffin about 50 yards before it came to rest on a concrete hiking and biking trail next to a guardrail along the bayou.

Richard Lee says he got a call last Tuesday from a deacon from Riceville Mt. Olive Baptist Church that his wife's casket had surfaced and asked him to come to the cemetery to identify her. Fobbs-Lee was two weeks shy of her 57th birthday when she succumbed to lung cancer and was buried at the cemetery in 2007.

Read more: http://www.khou.com/story/news/local/2015/06/01/widower-files-suit-after-wifes-casket-surfaces-during-flood/28311585/

[xfundy]

1. How horrible.

Having to see the corpse of his wife nearly ten years after the funeral. Unimaginable.

[cosmicone]

2. Such a litigious society we have become

It was an act of gawd for heaven's sake! Sheeeeeeeeeeeesh

[SoapBox]

3. Horrible but...

Suing?

Hope it gets tossed.

[Zight]

4. What if the vault wasn't properly sealed

As the plaintiff claims.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

5. Or they put her in a cardboard box?

Maybe people don't realize the sales pitch that goes on with these coffins and vaults. And the dollars involved.

What is the guy supposed to do when he asks questions and the church clams up and starts acting guilty?

Litigious society indeed.

Maybe I'm jaded. A girl I went to high school with left town in shame when her father was indicted for doing the old casket switcharoo.

[Thor_MN]

6. As I understand it, the purpose of the vault is to keep the ground from sinking...

It's to hold up the dirt, when the coffin eventually collapses. It not to pin the coffin down, lock it tight, keep anything from escaping...

Then again I could be wrong, but what I know says it's function is support and the only thing that "seals" it is gravity holding the concrete lid down. There is a reason that New Orleans's cemeteries have above ground crypts, coffins float.

Terrible thing to happen, but who are you going to sue for a flood?

[hamsterjill]

7. Goodness. I would have thought they might have used DNA or something for identification.

Can not imagine being asked to look at the corpse of a deceased loved one. Poor man.

That said - I'm not sure his lawsuit is going to have much merit. These floods were remarkable and sometimes bad things happen despite the best actions of mankind. I'm guessing there will be some settlement of this issue long before it sees a court room.