PROVIDENCE, RI – A Providence family has filed a stunning lawsuit against Rhode Island Hospital and Bell Funeral Home, alleging that a catastrophic mix-up led them to unknowingly bury a stranger’s body instead of their deceased mother, 75-year-old Emilia Severino. The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Rhode Island Superior Court, details a harrowing series of errors that left the grieving family traumatized and humiliated.
According to court documents, Severino died at Rhode Island Hospital on December 30 after suffering from fire and smoke inhalation injuries. Days later, the hospital allegedly gave Bell Funeral Home the wrong remains, complete with a tag identifying the body as Severino. The funeral home, the complaint says, never opened the body bag or verified the remains before placing it in a casket.
On January 19, the family held a closed-casket burial for what they believed was Severino. Only later did they learn from hospital officials that the wrong body had been buried. The body was exhumed the next day, with family members watching as their mother’s actual remains were identified at the hospital morgue—still partially unclothed and with medical devices attached.
“This was the most horrifying experience imaginable,” the complaint states. “Our family was robbed of the dignity of laying our mother to rest and instead forced to relive her death twice.”
Attorney Paul Sullivan, representing Severino’s daughter Humberta Tolentino Leyba, said in the filing that the hospital’s and funeral home’s conduct was “extreme and outrageous,” adding, “At every step, both defendants failed the family in the most basic duty of care owed to the dead and the living.”
Shocking chain of negligence
The lawsuit alleges that Rhode Island Hospital attached Severino’s identification tag to another person’s body and that Bell Funeral Home compounded the mistake by refusing the family’s request to view the body. The funeral home allegedly told family members the body was “too decomposed” to see, even though the complaint says it was not.
“When the casket lid was opened during the burial, the family could see the clothes they had bought for their mother still on hangers, tossed on top of the zipped-up body bag,” the lawsuit reads.
When hospital officials realized the mix-up after another funeral home came to retrieve the misidentified remains, they allegedly contacted the family. The suit claims that both the hospital and the funeral home initially considered “just switching the bodies without telling the family,” an idea that was stopped only when the cemetery demanded family consent for exhumation.
A section of the lawsuit describes how, after the exhumation, Bell Funeral Home “unceremoniously dropped” Severino’s body—still in the same state in which it had been identified at the hospital—into a casket and reburied her the same day.
“This was not a dignified burial,” the lawsuit asserts. “It was a second tragedy.”
Lawsuit seeks damages for emotional trauma
The complaint brings four counts against both defendants: negligence, negligent hiring and supervision, negligent infliction of emotional distress, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The plaintiffs are demanding a jury trial and an unspecified amount of damages.
Sullivan told reporters in a statement included in the filing, “What happened here is unconscionable. No family should ever have to suffer through something like this in a civilized society.”
Key points:
- Family alleges they unknowingly buried the wrong body due to hospital and funeral home errors
- Complaint says the hospital later realized the mistake when another funeral home came to collect the correct body
- The family is seeking damages for severe emotional distress and loss of dignity in the burial process
Institutional accountability questioned
Rhode Island Hospital has reportedly self-reported the incident to the state Department of Health and filed a complaint against Bell Funeral Home with the state licensure board. The hospital has not yet filed a response to the lawsuit.
The case, Tolentino Leyba v. Rhode Island Hospital, Bell Funeral Home, Inc., et al., is docketed under number PC-2026-00883 in Providence/Bristol County Superior Court.
The plaintiffs say their hope in filing the suit is to ensure that “no other family has to endure the same nightmare.”
