FAMILY members of an 82-year-old man who was wrongly cremated in December 2019 are now seeking S$225,000 (RM772,000) in general damages from the parties they believe are linked to the mix-up.
The late Kee Kin Tiong, a Taoist, had been given Christian funeral rites meant for a 70-year-old man who was scheduled for cremation at the time.
The Kee family’s legal team stated in court documents: “The plaintiffs ... were thus irreversibly denied the opportunity to say their final goodbyes ... as they were left with no body to conduct a funeral wake in accordance with Taoist funerary rites for.”
Among other things, Kee’s loved ones are also seeking special damages of nearly S$2,260 (RM7,750) for psychiatric consultation with a doctor and S$14,000 (RM48,000) which is the estimated sum of future grief therapy.
On the first day of the civil trial on Monday, the court heard that Kee died on Dec 29, 2019, and one of his children then engaged Tan Khiam Soon Undertaker to hold a seven-day funeral wake and his subsequent cremation.
On the same day, the undertaker sent Kee’s body to Century Products’ embalming studio at around 9.40pm. A freelance embalmer later started work on Kee’s body.
At around 7.20am the next morning, Nicholas Ang Kai, a worker for Harmony Funeral Care, collected a body that was supposed to be that of the 70-year-old man from the embalming studio. The younger man’s body had been sent there the day before, at around 2pm to 3pm.
A Tan Khiam Soon Undertaker employee arrived there shortly before 9am to collect Kee’s body and found that it was missing.
By then, Kee’s body had been taken to a Christian funeral, and was later cremated. His family members found out about the wrongful cremation at 10am.
On Monday, the plaintiffs’ lawyers told the court that a doctor diagnosed its clients with persistent complex bereavement-related disorder (PCBD) in March 2021.The lawyers alleged that Century Products and Ang had been negligent.
They said the company had failed to perform tasks such as maintaining a proper log book of bodies received by and collected from the embalming studio.
The lawyers also said that Harmony Tee Jing Yi, the proprietor of Harmony Funeral Care, had liability for Ang’s acts and that she had allegedly failed to provide him with proper job training.
Ang’s legal team, however, said that he does not owe any duty of care to the plaintiffs.
Century Products’ lawyers, who also represent Tee, said in their opening statement that the plaintiffs do not suffer from conditions such as PCBD.
Stressing that the doctor had diagnosed the six plaintiffs based on a single consultation for each of them, the lawyers added: “The plaintiffs exhibited no signs of abnormality in their mental state and the diagnosis was completely based on the plaintiffs’ self-reported symptoms.”
The family’s claim against Tan Khiam Soon Undertaker is over an alleged breach of contract.
Among other things, the lawyers said that there were implied terms in an oral contract that the undertaker had to ensure that Kee’s body was stored safely at all times while in its custody.
Tan Khiam Soon Undertaker’s legal team, however, contended that there was no breach of contract. — The Straits Times/ANN
