A distraught widow cannot recover damages for the trauma of seeing the casket containing her late husband fall to the ground as pallbearers were carrying it to the gravesite, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals has ruled.

Crystal Ulrich says she has had a recurring nightmare of her husband falling out of his casket since his funeral. She cited, among other things, society's “reverence for mortal remains” in arguing she could sue the manufacturer of the casket for negligent infliction of emotional distress.

Cercueils Alliance St. Laurent, Inc., allegedly used the wrong screws to attach handles to the casket of Ulrich's husband. When the pallbearers were halfway from the hearse to the gravesite, one of the handles broke off, causing the casket to hit the ground.

“I don't know that I can even describe it, to be standing there holding the handle as the casket bounced on the ground,” one of the pallbearers told the La Crosse Tribune.

Wisconsin has allowed claims involving the mutilation of a corpse. But the appeals court said Ulrich had not met the test of Bowen v. Lumbermens Mut. Cas. Co., 517 N.W.2d (1994), which precludes a bystander from recovering damages for emotional distress unless the victim suffered a fatal or severe injury and the plaintiff observed an “extraordinary event.”

“The victim was of course deceased when the casket in which he was being carried fell to the ground,” the court noted in affirming a La Crosse County judge who summarily dismissed the case.

“He could suffer no pain from the fall,” the opinion continued, “and, even assuming without deciding that damage to a corpse could ever qualify as a 'severe injury' for the purposes of a bystander’s claim of negligent infliction of emotional distress, there is no evidence that the body itself suffered any further damage or that the widow ever viewed any such damage.”

Ulrich argued in a brief that during a burial ceremony, “the casket is seen as part and parcel of the deceased body” and when her husband's casket fell, there was “severe damage to both the casket and the body.”

She also said the Wisconsin Supreme Court “has declared that public policy favors a cause of action” in cases of negligent handling of remains.

In Koerber v. Patek, 102 N.W. 40 (1905), a man was allowed to seek damages for the wrongful mutilation of his mother's corpse, while in Scarpaci v. Milwaukee County, 292 N.W.2d 816 (1980), the Supreme Court said parents could sue over the emotional distress resulting from an unauthorized autopsy on their child.

But the appeals court said those cases distinguished between willful and negligent interference with “a family’s right to bury their dead intact ... [Ulrich's] case involves a claim of negligence, not an intentional act, and, again, there is no indication that the body was actually affected by the fall of the casket to the ground.”

After Ulrich saw her husband's casket drop to the ground, she screamed and ran away from the scene. “The failure of the casket during a most solemn ceremony ... is truly an extraordinary event,” she argued.

Daniel Ulrich, 34, died in 2006 after complications from back surgery. His widow testified she has a recurring, vivid nightmare which

goes back to the cemetery and the casket falling, but my husband falls out out, and then later I see him standing next to my bed, and it wakes me up. I sit up at the end of my bed and he's there without his shirt on, just running his fingers across his incision and — and it's every night.

By Matthew Heller
11/2/10