NY funeral home sued for shipping wrong body: 'Beyond a simple mistake'
NEW YORK (PIX11) – A New York family is suing a funeral home after it mistakenly shipped the wrong body to another country instead of their loved one, according to a complaint.
The family of Elder Emilio Garcia Umul, represented by the Rizzuto Law Firm, filed the lawsuit against RG Ortiz Inc. in the New York State Supreme Court in Queens on Tuesday.
“This is beyond a simple mistake—it’s an unconscionable breach of trust,” said Phil Rizzuto, attorney for the Garcia and Maldonado families. “It is incomprehensible how such a careless error could occur, leaving two grieving families shattered.”
Mistaken Bodies
Two separate families were using RG Ortiz Funeral Home, Inc., after the passing of their loved ones.
The Maldonado family had retained the funeral home to ship the body of their 96-year-old mother to Ecuador. Another family (Garcia) also retained the funeral home’s services to send their 39-year-old loved one to Ecuador. Instead, the funeral home somehow swapped the bodies, according to court documents.
The funeral home mistakenly shipped 96-year-old Carmen Maldonado to Guatemala instead of where Garcia’s body should have been sent. The Maldonado family discovered this error on TikTok. After seeing the video, the family contacted the funeral home, which acknowledged the mistake, according to the complaint.
Garcia's body was left forgotten, a source said.
The Maldonado family filed a lawsuit in Oct. 2024. Both families seek unspecified damages.
The New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection has also filed a complaint against RG Ortiz, accusing them of failing to prepare bodies, misplacing remains, and other lapses that exacerbated the pain of grieving families.
PIX11 News attempted to contact RG Ortiz Funeral Home multiple times; an employee told us that the owner was out for the day.
Matthew Euzarraga is a multimedia journalist from El Paso, Texas. He has covered local news and LGBTQIA topics in the New York City Metro area since 2021. He joined the PIX11 Digital team in 2023. You can see more of his work here.