A local funeral home has been sued for $300,000 in a wrong body in the casket case.
The Circuit Court complaint was lodged by Willie L. Brown, Willie E. Brown and Dominique Brown against John P. Franklin Funeral Home.
The suit says Benjamin Franklin Brown died Nov. 8, 2017. At the time he was a patient at Woodland Terrace Nursing Home.
The suit, filed by attorney M. Shaw Cardwell of Wettermark & Keith, said the Franklin firm was retained to handle the body.
It says arrangements for a first viewing were set for 10 a.m. on Nov. 15. The funeral was to be at 1 p.m. at Prospect Baptist Church the next day.
The family said they arrived around 5 p.m. on Nov. 15 for the first viewing.
The suit says, "Upon viewing the body, plaintiffs immediately recognized that the body displayed was not the body of the deceased, but the clothes it was dressed in were the clothes intended for the deceased."
The suit says a representative of the funeral home insisted that it was the body of Mr. Brown.
It says after demands that the lower half of the casket be opened it was revealed that the body had legs. The deceased, due to a history of severe diabetes, did not have legs.
The suit says, "Knowledge of the facts that the wrong body had been displayed all day, and that non-family members had been kissing the body goodbye and paying their respects to a stranger dressed in their loved one's clothing, caused plaintiffs great anger, distress, and dismay, and filled them with mortification, anxiety and distressing uncertainty as to what had been done with the body of the deceased."