Jury awards Oregon family $48,000 for mistaken cremation

PORTLAND — A Multnomah County jury has awarded $48,000 to a family who could not say a final farewell to their 53-year-old mother because she was mistakenly cremated before they had the chance.

But the jury didn't award another $3 million the family sought.

They claimed the funeral director tried to cover up the mistake by saying the body was too decomposed to view. The judgment was against the crematorium.

The three-day trial pitted Pamela Grant's relatives against the funeral director and a crematory worker.

It provided graphic detail and questioned the profit motives of an industry that sometimes sells $8,000 cremations in copper caskets.

Greg Kafoury, the attorney for the family, argued that his clients might have received lesser service because they opted for a $650 cremation in a cardboard box.

The dispute began the day Nicholas Grant found his mother dead from a heart problem in the Gladstone apartment they shared in February 2007.

The family contacted the Holman Funeral Home in Oregon City three days later to arrange cremation, asking that it be delayed until relatives arrived from California.

There was agreement that funeral director Ron Rohde instructed Oregon Crematory to delay cremation, but there the agreement ended.

Nicholas Grant, his brother Nathan and their aunt Lori Harrison testified they told Rohde that they wanted to see Pamela Grant on Feb. 15 and place mementos in the coffin before the cremation.

They said Rohde called the crematory. When he came back to the room, the family testified, he looked nervous and urged them not to view the body because it was rapidly decomposing.

"He was pretty insistent," Nicholas Grant told jurors.

After they left, Rhode called to say their mother already had been cremated.

The family sued for $3 million, half for punitive damages and half for emotional distress caused by the "ugly images" planted in their heads. The family also sued the crematorium for $450,000.

Rohde argued that his business did its best to tell the family in a tasteful way that they should not view the body and that he didn't know of the cremation until after the family had left. He said he called them when he found out and personally delivered the ashes an hour later.

Jurors awarded nothing against the funeral home.