Lawsuit: Pierce County funeral home allegedly mishandled stillborn baby’s remains
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- A Spanaway couple alleges a Lakewood funeral home mishandled their daughter's remains.
- They have sued Mountain View Funeral Home for negligence, fraud and other claims.
- The funeral home says it's committed to providing "care and respect" to families.
After several years of trying to conceive a baby, a married Spanaway couple finally became expectant parents last fall. But after they lost their daughter, Ryleigh, in the womb, they say their heartbreak was compounded when a local funeral home mishandled the infant’s remains.
Ashleigh and Michael Thornburg on Monday sued Mountain View Funeral Home in Lakewood, alleging negligence, breach of contract, fraud and other claims for failing to properly care for their daughter after she was stillborn in February, court records show.
The lawsuit, lodged in Pierce County Superior Court, claims that the couple signed a contract with Mountain View to embalm their daughter roughly a month in advance of a planned funeral. Instead, the funeral home took nearly three weeks to perform the procedure to preserve Ryleigh’s body, the suit alleges.
As a result, her appearance deteriorated faster than anticipated and the delayed embalming left her unrecognizable, according to the suit and family.
“I had to open up her blanket to make sure that her hands and her feet were the same, because I did not think that was my daughter,” Ashleigh Thornburg, 35, said in a late April interview, when the couple was still preparing to file their suit. “And I feel disgusting as a mom for not recognizing her. But I didn’t recognize her at all.”
In a statement, a Mountain View spokesperson said it didn’t comment or provide details on any family service in order to respect the privacy of its clients.
“Our commitment to serve and do what is right for our families is paramount,” the spokesperson said. “Our focus will remain where it always has been, and that is to continue to provide our community and families with care and respect.”
Ryleigh was stillborn on Feb. 8 only 26 weeks into the pregnancy and, three days after taking possession of her body, Mountain View entered into a contract with the Thornburgs on Feb. 13 for funeral services that included “a promise to embalm Ryleigh’s remains,” the suit said. The charge for embalming was nearly $1,000, according to a news release prepared by the Thornburg’s legal counsel.
The couple, who have been together for six years, was led to believe that embalming would help their daughter’s appearance, with some degradation from how she looked when they had spent two days bonding with her at the hospital where she was stillborn, Ashleigh Thornburg said.
The Thornburgs scheduled their daughter’s funeral service for March 14. They didn’t want a public viewing but said they made it known to Mountain View that they wished to spend as much time with her as possible beforehand.
“The only thing I made clear, through this whole process with them, is that I wanted to see my daughter as much as I could before I had to put her in the ground,” an emotional Ashleigh Thornburg said in late April.
Ashleigh Thornburg, a psychology associate for the state of Washington, said she saw her daughter twice at Mountain View by Feb. 28, bringing her stuffed animals, pictures and a new blanket. Funeral home staff had recommended against the visits due to the infant’s decomposing state but the mother said she was undeterred.
Ashleigh Thornburg said she didn’t know what to expect but assumed her daughter’s physical condition was normal.
It was during the Feb. 28 visit when the couple says they were caught by surprise: They claimed that staff told them Ryleigh hadn’t actually been embalmed, despite the Thornburgs’ impression otherwise, and that the charge for the service would be refunded.
Ashleigh Thornburg said she was “stunned” and accused the funeral home of allowing Ryleigh to deteriorate more than she would have if she had been embalmed.
“How could you do that to my child?” she said.
Attorney Tim Ceder, who’s representing the couple, said he later learned it’s not common to embalm a baby but, if done, it should occur within two days after passing. He also said he believed that a staff member hadn’t known the associated challenges with embalming an infant and misrepresented the funeral home’s capability to secure a higher fee.
“Promising to embalm an infant is already maybe not ideal,” Ceder said in late April, “but to promise it and not do it when someone is at their most emotionally vulnerable is such a violation of trust and a violation of the duty that we as society expect of funeral homes.”
Mountain View made a “unilateral decision” to forgo the embalming and then performed the procedure on March 4 after the Thornburgs had learned it hadn’t been done, according to the suit.
Ashleigh Thornburg said she had been told that Ryleigh’s appearance wouldn’t change too much after the delayed embalming but the lawsuit alleges that Ryleigh was unrecognizable following the procedure and heavily made-up in an attempt to mask her decomposition. She resembled an older woman and her facial features had changed, according to the mother.
“Every time I close my eyes, that’s what I see,” she said, adding that she now wishes the procedure never happened.
For Michael Thornburg, a 33-year-old gate guard at Camp Murray adjacent to Joint Base Lewis-McChord, the most difficult part is separating the memory of his daughter from “the viewing after the failure of the embalming.”
The suit, which also claims infliction of emotional distress and violation of Washington state’s Consumer Protection Act, is seeking unspecified damages, legal fees and other relief deemed appropriate by the court.
Ashleigh Thornburg said she hoped that the lawsuit would bring attention to her family’s experience and that Mountain View will “do better next time or do just the bare minimum of their actual legal responsibilities.”
Meanwhile, she continues to struggle with feeling that she and her husband failed to protect their child.
“And I don’t know,” she said, “how to live with that as a mom, to be honest.”
