Mom’s funeral interrupted after wrong body placed in casket, NJ family’s lawsuit says

A mother’s funeral procession was interrupted as the casket was lowered into her grave because the wrong body was inside, a New Jersey family’s lawsuit says.

The family alleges another woman’s body lied in Kyung Ja Kim’s casket, wearing her clothing, for roughly three hours during the funeral, church and burial services, court documents show.

Now the family is suing Central Funeral Home of New Jersey and Blackley Funeral Home and Cremation Services, Inc. in Ridgefield for $50 million after suffering “severe, genuine and substantial emotional distress” because of the mix-up, according to the lawsuit filed on July 25.

McClatchy News contacted Central and Blackley funeral homes for comment on July 27 and was awaiting a response.

During the burial services on Nov. 13, 2021, Kyung Ja Kim’s grieving family watched as cemetery workers were suddenly ordered to lift the lowered casket from her funeral plot after the mix-up of bodies was realized, a complaint states.

Hours before, Kyung Ja Kim’s daughter, Kummi Kim, viewed the body believed to be her mother at Promise Church in Leonia and told the woman in charge of both funeral homes that her mother looked different, the complaint states.

“At the church when she opened the casket I told them this is not my mom she was so much younger looking,” Kummi Kim told media outlets at a news conference, according to WABC.

However, the funeral home director expressed “denial and dismay”— causing Kummi Kim to rationalize her mother’s “‘altered appearance’” was due to “the embalming process and application of heavy mortuary makeup, fake hair and/or some type of filler such as Botox,” according to the complaint.

Around 9 a.m., the funeral began at the church, which Kyung Ja Kim helped establish before her death, and the body of another woman was presented as her, the lawsuit says. The filing states several family members were there after traveling long distances for the service.

Afterward, the funeral home director and employees placed the casket containing the wrong body in a hearse and drove to a cemetery in Valhalla, New York for the burial along with the family and others, according to the complaint.

On the way to the cemetery, the funeral home director called Kummi Kim and said if she was unsure whether the body was her mother, “we should turn all the cars around,” the complaint states. But the director reportedly did not indicate if she knew anything was wrong or explain why she was calling.

However, Kummi Kim said she had been “confused and taken by surprise” but “wished to proceed to lay her mother to rest,” according to the lawsuit. Shortly after, the burial service began.

After the wrong body was placed in Kyung Ja Kim’s burial plot, the funeral director showed Kummi Kim a photo on her phone of her mother’s body still at Central Funeral Home, the complaint shows. Kummi Kim confirmed that the photo showed her mother’s body.

Then the director, “to the surprise of all,” ordered the workers to hoist the casket from the grave and had it transported back to the funeral home, according to the lawsuit.

“Without saying another word she ran away from the cemetery right that minute,” Kummi Kim said of the funeral home director during the news conference, according to WABC. “People just saw me collapsing down. No one was really sure what was going and they figured it out when I collapsed.”

One day later, an unplanned funeral was held for Kyung Ja Kim without several family members and others, including her three grandchildren, because they had to immediately travel home after the original planned funeral, the complaint states.

That day, the family met with the funeral director who “acknowledged” the misplacement of the bodies were due to “negligent and reckless failure to properly identify the body prior to commencement of preparation of the bodies for funeral services,” according to the lawsuit.

The family was offered a $9,000 refund for the funeral, the filing shows.

The lawsuit seeks $10 million for five causes of action, including the funeral home’s alleged “negligent infliction of emotional distress,” totaling $50 million, according to the complaint.

“We trusted the funeral home, but they violated the trust,” Kyung Ja Kim’s son-in-law Taichul Kim said, according to News 12 New Jersey.

Ridgefield is roughly 15 miles north of New York City.

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