NEGLIGENCE?

Woman Buried in Wrong Cemetery and Another Person’s Clothes in Horrifying Mix-Up, Lawsuit Says

Bloomfield-Cooper Jewish Chapels are being sued by the woman’s family for an egregious funeral mishap.

Despite specific, religious instructions for the burial of a New Jersey woman, she still ended up in the wrong cemetery and in someone else’s clothes, according to a new lawsuit. The court papers allege that Janet Kay, who died Oct. 3, 2020, was improperly interned by Bloomfield-Cooper Jewish Chapels, which shipped her body to a North Jersey cemetery when they requested she be laid to rest in Marlboro’s Morganville area. The family discovered the error when they attended the funeral service, where a representative made it clear they had lost Kay’s body. But it gets worse. Shortly after, a Bloomfield-Cooper representative called the family over FaceTime, showing them a woman who was not their mother but was in her clothing and jewelry. “Janet Kay’s final corporal moments in the eyes of the Jewish faith were not presented to her full family and friends,” Kay’s daughter, prominent Trenton attorney Robin Kay Lord, wrote in the lawsuit. Kay’s body was exhumed from the wrongful resting place on Oct. 7 and buried again, properly, later that day.