Oops, We Buried Someone Else In Your Mom’s Gravesite

A woman in Florida was recently visiting her father’s grave when she noticed there was something amiss with the burial plot reserved for her mother — someone was already buried in it.

Not thrilled with the idea that someone who is not her mother being buried in that spot, which had already been paid for, the daughter took her concerns to cemetery management.

“When I asked how you mismatch social security numbers he said it was an oversight,” she tells CBS Miami. “I said a person dies and you are burying them in a pre-paid plot, and it’s an oversight? It just didn’t make any sense to me.”

The family has filed a lawsuit against the company that operates the cemetery, and their lawyer alleges that this isn’t an isolated issue.

“We believe these plots are being sold over and over again in an effort to turn a profit,” claims the lawyer.

For its part, the cemetery operators tell CBS:

We intend to conduct a thorough investigation into this claim. We have strict quality-control standards for interments at all our cemeteries, and we are confident in those procedures. We value our relationships with our client families and invite them to contact us if they have any concerns about the burials of their loved ones.

In 2010, we brought you the similar story of a widow who found out that accidental double selling of a plot had led to another woman being buried next to her husband. At the time, that cemetery gave the widow two options: Have her husband re-interred in another plot or opt to be buried on top of her husband when her time came.

And back in 2009, workers at a cemetery in Chicago were accused of illegally displacing remains from old graves in order to recycle the plots.

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