Two Wake Forest parents are suing a cemetery company and its corporate ownership, claiming the cemetery mistakenly buried another person in the plot they purchased so they could be buried next to their deceased child. 

Federal court records reveal a Wake Forest family is bringing a class action lawsuit against Everstory Partners, a cemetery company that owns and operates more than 400 cemeteries in the United States. That includes more than 50 cemeteries in North Carolina. 

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The Florida-based company is at the center of a previous WRAL Investigation, in which a Wake County family discovered a person buried in a space they purchased at Montlawn Memorial Park in Raleigh. 

Everstory Partners owns several cemeteries in the Raleigh-metro area. 

Court records show defense attorneys moved the case from Wake County to the Eastern District of North Carolina last Friday, three days before WRAL's first story about the burial mix-up with the Greene family. 

The defendants initiated the move to federal court, citing the plaintiff's legal counsel that the class action suit could include families of hundreds of decedents. 

Mistaken burial at Pine Forest Memorial Gardens 

According to court records, two Wake Forest parents lost their son in March, 2021 and then buried their child's remains at Pine Forest Memorial Gardens. They also purchased two additional plots so they could be buried at their son's feet when they passed. 

Four years later, upon a gravesite visit, the parents discovered what appeared to be "another body" buried in the plot they owned next to their son. 

"Another employee of the cemetery 'placed a rod in the ground and confirmed again that someone was buried there,'" reads the complaint. 

The family is filing the suit on counts of:

  • Intentional infliction of emotional distress
    • Breach of contract
      • Negligence
        • Unfair and deceptive trade practices
          • Common law fraud

            "As direct and proximate result of Defendants' fraud, plaintiffs have suffered damages in an amount to be proven at trial," the records state.

             The Wake Forest parents are being represented by Sauder Schelkopf, a law firm that represents families in other funeral home and cemetery matters, as well as Bochetto and Lentz.

            The two firms are not licensed in North Carolina, and the North Carolina Counsel for the matter is Poulin Willey Anastopoulo. 

            WRAL has reached out for comment to both plaintiff's and defendant's attorneys, and are awaiting to hear back.  

            Issues at cemeteries owned by same company

            In 2013, Beth and her two daughters Lydia and Sarah purchased interment rights at Montlawn Memorial Park in Raleigh. They wanted to rest beside Beth's husband and Sarah and Lydia's father. 

            More than a decade passed and upon a visit to the father's gravesite in 2024, the Greene's discovered a mix-up: the remains of another person seemingly buried in one of the plots they previously purchased. 

            "They [Montlawn] blamed it on faulty maps that they had, and that it was done in error," Lydia said. 

            The Greene family later learned that a cremated person was buried in one of the spaces they bought for the daughters. Through talking with the family of that buried individual, they learned the individual that was moved into the Greene's plot was placed there because another person-- separate from either family-- was buried in the plot the other family purchased for themselves, too. 

            Beth described their relationship with the other family involved as cordial, as both parties are unsure about what to do moving forward. 

            “We have met three times to discuss what happened. We are not angry at that widow because she was not told that it belonged to someone else," Beth said. 

            Separately, there is confusion over the second plot purchased by the Greene family, but for a different reason. 

            They say the cemetery informed them that, as a result of a record-keeping error, the plot number they originally purchased was not in the spot they originally thought it was in. They learned a different family, separate from those connected to the other plot, owns the burial rights for the space they believed to have purchased. 

            This is not the first time WRAL News has learned about a situation like this at Montlawn Memorial Park. 

            In 2019, a Garner man was exhumed after a gravesite had been double-sold. In that case, the original deed owners of a purchased plot actually petitioned a court to have Kizzie Sewell's husband, Winfred Barnes, moved. He died of a heart attack at work on Christmas Eve in 2014.  

            Barnes' body was dug up from the spot where he had been buried five years previously. 

            History of attorney general complaints at cemetery

            WRAL requested records from the office of North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson. 

            The request revealed eight consumer complaints against Montlawn since 2020. One of those, WRAL found, was the Greene family's 170-page consumer complaint. 

            Among the seven other records received, none contained the same dilemma that the Greene family is experiencing. 

            They did, however, reveal several other consumer concerns related to billing complications with the cemetery as well as mistakes with markers. Problems with markers range from incorrect grave placements to missing date-of-death records.