A beleaguered funeral house could lastly have its license pulled simply as a brand new lawsuit soils their status even additional.
The now notorious Bronx-based R.G. Ortiz Funeral Properties is going through “fines and potential license revocation on account of the findings,” following the conclusion of a state Division of Well being investigation, a spokesperson informed The Put up.
The spokesperson mentioned the well being division, which regulates licensure of funeral house administrators in New York by means of its Bureau of Funeral Directing, couldn’t remark particularly on the probe or the fees.
In the meantime, Ortiz is being sued but once more, this time for allegedly failing to correctly take care of the corpse of a beloved father — whose physique arrived decomposing for a second funeral service within the Dominican Republic.
His household was so horrified to search out their father in such a complicated fee of rot that they determined to forego the second viewing and transfer straight to a burial, the lawsuit claims.
The physique sat for almost eight days contained in the Bronx funeral house’s viewing room, in line with an lawyer representing the devastated household.
“Eight days within the viewing room — unrefrigerated and unembalmed,” mentioned lawyer Phil Rizzuto, who informed The Put up he has near 10 open fits towards Ortiz. “I can’t think about how. The physique will need to have smelled, no?”
A lawyer representing the troubled funeral house in quite a few lawsuits didn’t reply to a request for remark.
The newest go well with, filed final in Bronx Supreme Court docket final week, comes lower than a month after one other household accused the funeral house of sending the physique of their beloved grandmother to the mistaken nation and permitting her stays to additionally decompose, horrifying the girl’s survivors.
Even earlier than patriarch Antonio Cerda Garcia died earlier this 12 months on March 25, his household made preparations with Ortiz for him to be buried in Santo Domingo, within the Dominican Republic, the go well with states.
Garcia’s physique was despatched to the funeral house the day he died, and assumed duty for his physique’s preparation and the “correct and sanitary transportation” to the Dominican Republic, in line with the lawsuit.
However after days of ready, his physique lastly arrived on April 8 “in decomposing, unpreserved situation,” the household’s lawsuit reads, forcing the household to cancel the funeral service and proceed with solely a burial.
“It’s simply weird that they don’t care about their shoppers,” mentioned Rizzuto.
A funeral house chain with areas in Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn, Ortiz has lengthy been in scorching water over accusations of their disdain for the useless — with claims of desecration relationship again so far as 2017.
Final summer season, the town’s Division of Client and Employee Safety scored a settlement price lots of of 1000’s of {dollars} for purchasers over alleged predatory and misleading practices.
Company spokesperson Michael Lanza mentioned that New Yorkers harmed by Ortiz could make a declare for restitution by calling 311, or visiting their web site.
The state Lawyer Common’s Workplace didn’t reply to The Put up’s request for remark.
