The body of a Texas man who died in January was allegedly handled so sloppily by a Houston-area mortuary, his family couldn’t hold the open-casket funeral they had planned, according to a $1 million lawsuit reviewed by The Independent.
Elena Johnson paid Houston’s Bill Clair Family Mortuary to embalm her husband Sigmund, after which the company would deliver the 81-year-old’s remains to the service, states the civil complaint filed May 20 in Harris County District Court.
However, it contends, the mortuary showed up late to the family viewing before the scheduled service, and that when they finally arrived, Johnson’s husband’s remains were in “extremely poor condition.” Specifically, the complaint says the corpse was “leaking fluids from the body and face,” that it was "strewn about in the casket, rather than rigid and in place,” and that the clothes were “not entirely on.”
“Furthermore, the… casket was dented to the point that it would not close,” the complaint states.
In response, one of the mortuary employees “attempted to close the casket by sitting on it,” according to the complaint. However, the jerry-rigged solution was unsuccessful, as the casket “could not remain closed and was never fully closed… at the graveside service at the cemetery.”
That, the complaint maintains, caused Johnson “severe mental anguish and complicated her grief.”
Rev. Michael Bill, the owner and mortician at Bill Clair Family Mortuary, did not respond Wednesday to a request for comment.
The employees at Bill Clair Family Mortuary “are caring and experienced professionals who understand that each family is unique and has personal requests and traditions,” its website tells prospective customers. “These requests and traditions are of utmost importance to our staff of licensed funeral directors.”
The company says it serves the community “with a compassion that is rare in the funeral business today,” and that it is “confident that we can provide you and your family with the care you need and deserve.”
Yet, Johnson’s complaint lays out a rather different story.
On January 5, 2026, Johnson’s husband passed away, her complaint begins. It says she contacted the Bill Clair Family Mortuary for the “embalming, burial and final disposition of her beloved husband”
The mortuary assured Johnson that it would “care for” the deceased, and prepare the body for the funeral, the complaint continues.
But, it alleges, the body – and casket – were in such poor shape, that a “proper church funeral service [could not] take place as scheduled.”
Funeral home mishaps have made headlines before.
In 2023, a Long Island, New York mortuary mistakenly buried the wrong man next to someone else’s wife, even dressing him in the actual decedent’s favorite Led Zeppelin T-shirt, as the family had requested. More than three weeks after the man’s daughters unwittingly said their final goodbyes to a total stranger, they “had to endure a second funeral service with the proper corpse of their father,” according to a $60 million lawsuit they later filed.
In a statement at the time to The Daily Beast, a spokesperson for Star of David Memorial Chapels said they were “reviewing all our protocols and will make any recommended changes to ensure the correct identification of family members.”
Last year, a California father paid the Lima Family Erickson Memorial Chapel more than $10,000 for a “full‑service memorial tribute package” that included embalming, dressing and transportation, and asked that his son be buried in different clothing than what he was wearing at the time of his death.
Weeks later, when the funeral director gave the father a bag she said contained his son’s clothes, he took it home and emptied it into the washing machine, only to discover it in fact contained the 27-year-old’s “rotting” brain, according to a lawsuit filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court.
“Discovering one’s own child’s brain matter in a washing machine and then having to scoop it out...is a horror no family should ever endure,” the lawsuit said.
In another instance, a Queens, New York, funeral home shipped the wrong body to Guatemala for a planned service, and was unable to locate the right one for another two weeks, according to a lawsuit filed by the family.
By that time, the body was so badly decomposed, the deceased woman’s skin looked like it was “melting off her body,” attorney Phil Rizzuto told The Independent, adding that both of her hands had to be wrapped in plastic bags to prevent the skin from sloughing off.
The Bill Clair Family Mortuary is presently facing a second lawsuit from a man whose mother died in January and was allegedly cremated without permission, relying on the word of a grandchild who did not have authority to make such a decision, according to court filings.
As a result, the woman’s son said in his suit that he had “sustained severe and debilitating and long-lasting devastation and mental and emotional damages.”
Elena Johnson’s complaint accuses the Bill Clair Family Mortuary of negligence and negligent misrepresentation for, among other things, “failure to properly embalm the Decedent’s body causing visible decomposition during viewing,” “failure to inspect and secure the casket,” and “failure to train employees on proper methods.”
Johnson is now seeking at least $1 million in consequential damages, reliance damages, punitive damages, and remediation costs, along with mental anguish “that in reasonable probability, will sustain in the future,” plus attorneys’ fees and court costs.
