As the casket was being lowered into the grave, the funeral director suddenly intervened, ordering the cemetery employees to pick it up and return it to the hearse. There was a mix-up, the director explained. The funeral home had placed the body of another woman with the same last name in their mother’s casket, along with their mother’s clothes and dentures, the family said in a $50 million lawsuit filed against the funeral home on Monday. Kim’s three children and son-in-law claim in the suit that Central Funeral Home of New Jersey, which operates Blackley Funeral Home in Ridgefield, NJ, he was negligent and careless when he placed the wrong body in their mother’s casket in November, compounding their grief and emotional distress. Man Arrested for Leaving Flowers on Fiancee’s Grave Found Guilty of Littering Kummi Kim, one of her daughters, passed out at the scene when the casket was pulled from the ground, said Michael Maggiano, the family’s attorney. “Mrs. Kim was a very, very religious woman,” Maggiano said. “She wanted her death to be celebrated at the Church of the Promise in Leonia, New Jersey, and that didn’t happen — in the casket was another woman who was represented by funeral home to become a mother.” Representatives at Blackley and Central funeral homes told The Washington Post Wednesday morning that they would forward requests for comment to management, but there was no response by noon. No attorney information is listed for the companies in court records. When Kyung Ja Kim, 93, died at her daughter Kummi’s home in Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Kummi Kim called the funeral home in nearby Ridgefield — where 30 percent of the population is of Korean descent, according to the Census Bureau — hoping to arrange a funeral and burial in accordance with Korean tradition, according to the lawsuit. Haemin funeral director Gina Chong arranged for the body to be picked up and met with the family the next day to discuss how Kim would dress and present herself for the open casket funeral. But when the casket arrived for the funeral two days later at Promise Church in Leonia — where Kim had long attended and requested to be buried — it contained the body of Whaja Kim, another woman held at the funeral home but not was related to the family, the lawsuit states. ‘Dad, that’s not grandma’: Funeral home mix-up results in wrong woman being cremated When Kummi Kim had a chance to see her mother’s body shortly before the funeral, she told Chong that the body did not appear to be her mother’s, according to the suit. Chong responded with a “very clear expression of denial and disappointment,” leading Kim to rationalize that the embalming and make-up process must have altered the body’s appearance. “They made her up and led the family to believe, ‘That’s the mother, she looks a little different since she’s dead,’” Maggiano said. “So the family thought, ‘Well, OK, we’re not sure that’s the mom, but you’re the expert, so we’ll trust you.’ The funeral went ahead as planned, and the casket was loaded into a hearse to travel to a cemetery in Valhalla, N.Y. The family later learned that during the funeral, Chong had called and texted her daughter Whaja Kim about the “IDs features” of her mother and the daughter sent back several photos, the suit said. As the procession traveled to the cemetery, Chong called Kummi Kim and told her that if she wasn’t sure the body was her mother’s, they should “turn around all the cars,” without further explanation, according to the suit. Distraught, Kim told Chong that they should proceed with the burial. Thirty minutes after the graveside service, Chong took a photo on her phone of a body lying at the funeral home and showed it to Kim. Kim said it was her mother’s. Without explanation, Chong asked cemetery workers to remove the casket from the grave “as family members looked on in shock,” the lawsuit said. Chong later met with the family and informed them that Huaja Kim’s body had been dressed in their mother’s clothes and then presented at the funeral and burial. Chong later acknowledged to the family that the funeral home had placed their mother’s dentures under a pillow under Whaja Kim’s body, despite the fact that Whaja Kim had a full set of teeth, according to the suit. Chong arranged an emergency funeral with the right body the next day, but it could not take place at their mother’s church because it was being used for Sunday services. Several family members had already left because they could not change their travel plans, the suit said. The mistake violated the family’s contract with the funeral home and disrespected Korean burial tradition and their mother’s wishes for a funeral in her home church, the family said in the suit. They also said the funeral home had many opportunities to realize the mistake and instead ignored “clear signs of body confusion” until the wrong body was already in their mother’s grave. Chong told the family that the two employees who received Kim’s body did not place an identification tag on her, which is against best practices in the industry, Maggiano said. The funeral home offered to refund the $9,000 the family had paid in fees, but later cashed the check anyway, according to an amended complaint filed Wednesday. “My mother lived a long life and wanted her funeral to be a celebration,” Kummi Kim said at a news conference Monday, according to NJ Advance Media. “Her last wish was for everything to be in the church in the right way. So I feel very guilty that we couldn’t give her the last wish.” According to local news, families in Houston. Charlotte? Waco, Tex. Columbus, Ohio; Pontiac, Mich. Ahoskie, NC; and Fresno, Calif., have said in the past two years that they’ve discovered the wrong bodies in their loved ones’ coffins. In November, CBS New York reported, a family sued a Long Island funeral home for $88 million after they said the funeral director ignored their suggestions that the wrong body was in their mother’s casket until after her burial. Maggiano said the Kim family was not seeking financial gain and would donate any money they receive from the lawsuit to two churches that were important to their mother. “They don’t want a dollar of it,” Maggiano said. “They’re doing it for their mother, and that’s what a mother would want.”
