Family Blames Hospital for Marine Cremation

(CN) - The family of a US. Marine Corporal who died in 2013 says in a lawsuit that hospital staff misidentified his body and sent it to the wrong funeral home where it was cremated.

Cpl. Chase Glenn, a native of Mississippi, died of unspecified causes in Bluffton, S.C. on Sunday, June 23, 2013, and his body was sent to the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston so that an autopsy could be performed.

In a complaint filed on June 22, Glenn's family says they expected his remains to be delivered to the Simplicity Lowcountry Funeral Home in Charleston following the autopsy, and that his body was then to shipped to his wife in Hollandale, Mississippi for burial.

However, the family says someone at the hospital mislabeled their loved one's remains and he was delivered instead to a different funeral, where another family, believing he was their deceased relative, had him cremated.

"The other individual's family then took the remains to a desired location to be spread in accordance with the other individual's family desires," the complaint says.

In the meantime, the mistake was discovered, the Anderson Funeral Home notified, and it was able to recover "what was represented to be the cremated remains of Cpl. Chase L. Glenn," the complaint says.

Glenn's family complains that the mix-up in the hospital denied them the opportunity to identify, view and pay their last respects to him prior to his formal burial with full military honors.

According to the complaint, a subsequent investigation by the U.S. Marine Corp. "found that MUSC was responsible for the mislabeling which directly caused the unintended cremation."

The Marine's family seeks unspecified compensatory damages on claims of negligence, mishandling of a corpse, breach of bailment, negligent infliction of emotional distress.

They are represented by Samuel Allen of the Clore Law Group in Charleston.

Representatives of MUSC could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday evening.

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