Fort Lauderdale Funeral Home Negligence Lawyer
Broward carries one of the heaviest concentrations of funeral establishments and crematories in the state, and our main office sits a short drive from the courthouse where these suits are filed. We take these claims for families across Broward County: wrongful cremation, remains lost or released to the wrong people, failed embalming, burial in the wrong plot. Our office is at 2101 W Commercial Blvd, and a suit like this is filed in the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit at the Broward County Courthouse. Call 954-522-5800 and speak to a lawyer about what happened.
Do not give a recorded statement to the funeral home or its insurer before you speak to a lawyer. Keep asking questions and get the answers in writing. Broward crematories and cemeteries keep internal logs that are not handed over voluntarily, and what the funeral home puts in writing to you now is what we hold them to later.
Broward is where this firm actually tries cases
Below is what a Broward County funeral home claim actually involves: what tends to go wrong here, what Florida requires the family to prove, how it gets proved, and what it is worth. The statewide page carries the statutes. This is the part specific to the county.
Broward funeral home claims are filed in the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit. The county has an unusually high rate of direct cremation and a large population whose closest relatives live in other states, which is the combination behind most of the authorization failures we see. Florida allows these claims with no physical injury.
What to do this week
None of this requires a lawyer and all of it is easier now than in six months. Where a case exists, these are also the steps that decide how strong it is.
- Put every question in writing, starting today. Email or text rather than telephone, and ask the same questions you have already asked. Who authorized this. When. Where are the remains now. Who handled them. What paperwork exists. A funeral home that has made a mistake will answer a phone call vaguely and will answer an email carefully, and the careful answer is the one you can use later. If they will only talk, write down what they said afterward and send it back to them asking them to confirm it.
- Do not sign anything else. Not an amended contract, not a revised authorization, not a settlement of the bill, not a waiver offered with an apology and a refund. Refunds in these cases arrive attached to language that ends the claim, and they arrive fast, before a family has any idea what happened. A refund of the funeral bill is nothing next to what this kind of case is worth, and it cannot be undone once it is signed.
- Keep the paperwork you already have. The contract, the price list, the authorization forms, the death certificate, the cremation authorization if there was one, the receipts, the correspondence and anything from a cemetery or a crematory. Photograph all of it today. These files are usually thin and the originals are usually held by the funeral home, so what the family kept is frequently the only independent copy of anything.
How these cases arise in Fort Lauderdale
This is our main office and our home circuit. The funeral home verdict this firm is known for was won in front of a Broward jury, not settled quietly on paper, and the lawyers who did that work sit at 2101 W Commercial Blvd.
Broward carries a heavy concentration of funeral establishments, crematories and cemeteries serving a large and aging population. Volume is part of why things go wrong here: a crematory running at capacity is a crematory where paperwork gets rushed, and rushed paperwork is how the wrong person gets cremated.
Broward has one of the highest direct cremation rates in Florida and a population whose next of kin are frequently a thousand miles away. Those two facts produce most of what walks through this door.
Arrangements made entirely by telephone
The recurring shape of a Broward case: a death here, a family somewhere else, everything agreed without anybody seeing the establishment.
- Authorization taken verbally and reduced to a form nobody in the family ever saw
- A relative told they were the one entitled to sign when somebody closer had priority
- Decisions made in a hurry across a time difference, with no written record kept
- A family who never viewed the body and had to take the establishment at its word
Direct cremation providers
A high-volume, low-cost segment where the entire transaction is online and the margins depend on speed.
- Identification steps compressed or skipped between collection and cremation
- Bodies held together at a facility rather than at the establishment sold to the family
- A cremation carried out before a relative’s objection reached anybody
- Nothing recoverable and nothing correctable once it has happened
Bodies moving between more than one business
The funeral home the family hired is regularly not the business that did the work.
- A funeral establishment, a separate crematory and a cemetery, each separately licensed
- Release paperwork at every handover, which is what establishes custody
- Three companies pointing at each other while the family gets no answer from any of them
- Insurance behind each of them rather than one policy covering the lot
Cases the medical examiner touched
Where a death was reportable, the county held the body before anybody else did.
- Release documentation showing exactly when custody transferred, and to whom
- Identification carried out under District 17 procedures rather than by the establishment
- A written record that predates anything the funeral home produced
- One of the first things requested in a Broward file for exactly that reason
What we ask Fort Lauderdale families to look at
- A crematory that cannot tell you which retort your loved one went into, or when
- Authorization forms produced after the fact, or signed by a relative with no legal authority
- Remains held past the date on the contract while the explanation keeps changing
- A cemetery unable to show the plot map matching the deed your family holds
What actually goes wrong
These are the failures that bring families to this firm. Where a death fell under the Broward County Medical Examiner, the release paperwork usually shows who held custody at the moment one of them happened, and it is among the first records we request.
- A cremation carried out without the written authorization Florida requires, or on the word of somebody who had no authority to give it
- The wrong body cremated, so nothing can be recovered and nothing can be undone
- Remains released to the wrong family, and buried or scattered before anybody noticed
- Ashes lost, mixed with another person’s, or handed over in a container that was never opened until it was too late to ask
- A burial in the wrong plot, in the wrong section, or in a grave already occupied
- A body buried without the service the family paid for and was told had happened
What a family is left with
The grief that had somewhere to go, and then did not
This is what these cases are actually about, and it is why Florida treats them differently from an ordinary claim. A funeral is the arrangement a family makes to hold a death in a shape they can carry. When it is mishandled, that arrangement is taken away and replaced with an image the family did not choose and cannot put down.
Families describe the same things afterward: not being able to stop picturing it, avoiding the cemetery, being unable to talk about the person without talking about what happened to the body instead. That is the injury, and it is recognized as one.
Nothing that can be put right
Most claims are about restoring something. These are not. Where a body has been cremated, there is no examination to be had and no correction to be made, and the family is left with a question that will not have an answer. That finality is part of what a court is asked to account for, and it is the reason a case involving a cremation is valued differently from one where a mistake was caught.
A funeral that has to be done twice
Where remains are recovered, or a burial is corrected, the family goes through it again: another day, another set of arrangements, another gathering of the same people, and this time with everybody knowing why. The costs of that are recoverable and they are the smallest part of it.
What Florida law requires you to prove
The claim exists without any physical injury
Florida is unusual here, and it is the single thing most families are told wrongly. The ordinary rule is that mental anguish is not recoverable without an accompanying physical injury. The mishandling of a dead body is a recognized exception to that rule, so a family with no physical injury at all still has a claim.
The statewide page sets out the authority for that, along with the standard of proof Florida applies, which is higher than most families are told and is worth understanding before anybody decides what to do.
Who was entitled to decide, and in what order
Florida decides by statute who may authorize a burial or a cremation, in a fixed order of priority, and a cremation cannot happen at all without that person’s written authorization. A very large share of these cases begins with somebody who was not on that list signing a form, or with nobody signing one. That order, and what it means for who may bring a claim, is set out in full on the statewide page.
The establishment, the licensee and the people who work there
Florida licenses funeral establishments, direct disposal establishments, cremation facilities, cemeteries and the individuals working in them, and a licensee is answerable for what happens under its license. The claim usually runs against more than one of them, and where a body passed between a funeral home, a crematory and a cemetery, the question of who held custody at the moment something went wrong is answered from the release paperwork rather than from anybody’s account.
The deadline
Most claims arising on or after March 24, 2023 have to be filed within two years, and an older one keeps the four years that applied when it happened. The practical deadline is much shorter, because the records that decide these cases sit with the establishment and the physical evidence is regularly destroyed as part of the very thing being complained about.
How we prove it in Broward County
A Broward case is usually proved out of paperwork the family never held and a timeline nobody wrote down until we asked.
- The contract, the general price list and every authorization form, compared against who Florida says could sign
- The release paperwork at each handover between funeral home, crematory and cemetery
- Medical examiner release records where District 17 held the body
- Every email, text and voicemail with the establishment, in date order
- Identification and transfer logs at the facility that actually did the work
- The licensing and complaint history of every business in the chain
- Refrigeration and storage records where a body was held rather than moved promptly
- Records of counseling or medical treatment sought by anybody in the family afterward
Send the request to leave everything alone in writing today, even if it feels dramatic. In a county where cremation is the default, the window between a mistake being noticed and the evidence ceasing to exist is measured in days.
What the funeral home and its insurer will say
The response in these files follows a pattern, and it starts with sympathy and a refund. What follows is worth recognizing for what it is.
A full refund, and a form to sign
The first move in almost every one of these cases. The refund is real and the form beside it usually ends the claim, sometimes in a sentence nobody points out. A funeral bill is a few thousand dollars and these cases are not valued anywhere near there. Take the apology, keep the form, and let somebody read it before it is signed.
It was an administrative error and it has been corrected
Corrected how, by whom, and recorded where. An establishment that says a mistake has been fixed has created a document saying so, and that document is requested. Where the mistake was a cremation, nothing has been corrected, and describing it that way is itself worth noting.
You have no proof this happened
Said early, and usually while the establishment holds all of the records. The contract, the authorizations, the release paperwork, the logs, the transfer records and the internal correspondence exist and are obtained. Where a regulator has investigated, that file exists too. The family being unable to prove it in the first week is not the same as it being unprovable.
What a claim can include
- Mental anguish, which is the case. Not an add-on here. The emotional harm to the family is the injury Florida recognizes in these claims, and it is the largest part of what one is worth.
- What the funeral cost, and what putting it right costs. The original arrangements, and a second set where a service, a burial or a disinterment has to be done again.
- Treatment for what it did. Counseling, therapy and medical care for the family members affected, past and ongoing, where somebody has sought it.
Why this office for a Fort Lauderdale case
A Broward funeral home claim is filed in the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit at the Broward County Courthouse, and this firm has been on West Commercial Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale since 1993. The firm tried the funeral home case that produced a $3,500,000 verdict rather than referring it to somebody else, and the lawyer who handles this work sits in this office.
Who you would be dealing with
A Fort Lauderdale funeral home case is handled by one of the four trial attorneys in this photograph. You will speak with the attorney who has your case, and you will have their direct line whenever you need them.
They have been trying Broward County cases together since 1993, and a suit arising in Fort Lauderdale is filed in the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit at the Broward County Courthouse.
Meet the attorneys →Fort Lauderdale funeral home questions
Answered by Brett J. Yonon, who handles the firm's funeral home and wrongful death cases.
Has Wolf & Pravato actually tried one of these to a jury?
Yes. This firm took a funeral home negligence case to verdict and recovered $3,500,000. That matters beyond the number, because insurers keep track of which firms try cases and which ones always settle, and that record is worth more at the negotiating table than anything we could put on a billboard.
We live out of state and arranged everything by phone. Does that hurt us?
No, and it is the most common way these cases arise in Broward. It usually helps, because a telephone arrangement leaves a written trail on your side that a walk-in arrangement does not: the emails, the texts, the confirmations. What it does mean is that you never saw the establishment or the body, so what you were told becomes the whole record of what you agreed to. Save all of it.
The funeral home offered a full refund and an apology.
Take the apology and read the paperwork before signing anything. Refunds in these cases arrive attached to language that ends the claim, sometimes in a single sentence. A funeral bill is a few thousand dollars, and a case involving a wrongful cremation or lost remains is not valued anywhere near there. Once the release is signed it cannot be undone.
Where would a Fort Lauderdale funeral home case actually be filed?
In the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit at the Broward County Courthouse. Which courthouse matters more than people expect, because local practice, the judges and the jury pool all differ by circuit. We try these cases in Broward County rather than referring them out.
What should I do before I call a Fort Lauderdale lawyer?
Keep asking the funeral home questions and get the answers in writing. Save every contract, authorization form and receipt. Do not give a recorded statement to their insurer first. Then call. If there is no case here we will say so, and the call still costs you nothing.
More in Fort Lauderdale
Fort Lauderdale Personal Injury Lawyer
Everything we handle in Broward County, and where our office is.
View →Florida Funeral Home Negligence Lawyer
The Florida standard of proof, the regulator, and the warning signs.
View →Case Results
Verdicts and settlements, including a $3,500,000 funeral home jury verdict.
View →
Nobody at the funeral home will give you a straight answer
Tell a lawyer what happened. We are at 2101 W Commercial Blvd, Suite 1500, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33309, and the conversation costs nothing even if we tell you there is no case to bring.