NEW YORK (Legal Newsline) - A New York funeral home faces a lawsuit after it took more than a month to get a man's ashes to Poland.
Jadwiga Borkowska sued Peter Jarema Funeral Home on March 17 in New York County Supreme Court. She alleges the business failed to include the required certificates and documentation when shipping the ashes of her husband Jan to Warsaw.
Jadwiga says she was forced to repeatedly cancel funeral arrangements and suffered severe emotional distress. She and Jan married in Poland in 1984 and moved to New York in 1999.
Jan passed on Nov. 16 and Peter Jarema Funeral Home was hired to handle his cremation and repatriation to Poland, the suit says, where a religious funeral at the Warsaw Roman Catholic Church was scheduled for Dec. 15.
However, the suit says, the funeral home failed to obtain a burial transit permit. After several delays, Jan's ashes didn't make it to a Polish funeral home until Dec. 24.
"Decedent's funeral, thanks to the grossly negligent ineptitude of Defendant's agents and employees, did not transpire until six weeks after his death," the suit says.
Jadwiga is represented by David Zeitlin of Zeitlin & Zeitlin in Brooklyn.