Appellate Court of Maryland Finds Expert Testimony Isn’t Required to Establish Cemetery Breached its Duty of Care in Handling a Dead Body

Maryland Rule of Evidence 5-702 provides that

Expert testimony may be admitted, in the form of an opinion or otherwise, if the court determines that the testimony will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue. In making that determination, the court shall determine

(1) whether the witness is qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education,

(2) the appropriateness of the expert testimony on the particular subject, and

(3) whether a sufficient factual basis exists to support the expert testimony.

So, should expert testimony be required to establish that a cemetery breached its duty of care in disinterring or otherwise handling a dead body? That was the question of first impression addressed by the Appellate Court of Maryland in its recent opinion in Osiris Holding of Maryland, LLC v. Daniels, 2025 WL 342008 (Md. App. 2025).

In Daniels,, a mother decided to move her son’s remains from Lincoln Memorial to a Muslim cemetery, Al-Firdaus Memorial Gardens. This eventually led to the following facts:

The cemetery operators again attempted to lift the [outer burial container] (“OBC”) out of the ground. This time, the OBC lid came off, and the OBC fell back into the freshly excavated hole. [The mother] testified that the OBC fell with so much force that her son’s body “pop[ped] in the air,” and his remains then came back down and “partially spilled on the ground.” She screamed, walked away, and then saw the mortician from Lincoln Memorial arrive and yell at the cemetery operators, “telling them that they were so stupid, they couldn’t do anything right.” One of the cemetery operators then “got a shovel and picked [her] son up like he was roadkill and put him in” the broken OBC. A cemetery operator then used the backhoe to flip the OBC “right side up” and lift it to ground level. Once the OBC was on ground level, the mortician and her assistant put Mr. Daniels’ remains in a body bag and “slung him in the new [OBC] like he was a sack of potatoes.”

First, as a matter of first impression, the court concluded “that a cemetery has a duty of care in disinterring or otherwise handling a dead body.” Second, as a matter of impression, the court concluded that expert testimony was not necessary to establish a breach of that duty of care. According to the court,

In this case, however, expert testimony was not necessary to show a breach of the applicable standard of care. As the parties recognize, industry standards can be admitted to show the applicable standard of care in a negligence cause of action….

Here, Mr. Davis, the general manager of the cemetery at the time of his deposition, testified regarding industry standards for a disinterment. He stated that a cemetery must have a mortician present at a disinterment, from the opening of the grave until “the body is pulled out of the ground.” Because there is a high probability that an OBC will break during a disinterment, it is industry policy to have an extra OBC present during a disinterment. He explained that, if the OBC becomes compromised prior to “getting it out of the ground,” someone—presumably the mortician—“would have had to have gone in there, picked up — picked the individual up out of the outer burial container” and placed the remains in the new OBC that was standing by.

Based on this evidence, a reasonable fact finder could determine that the applicable standard of care owed by Osiris during the disinterment was to have an extra OBC on site, to have a mortician present, and once the lid cracked and the OBC became compromised, the mortician present should have moved Mr. Daniels’ remains from the compromised OBC to the new OBC before continuing to bring Mr. Daniels’ remains out of the grave.19

Mr. Davis also testified that professional standards for cemetery operators required that they “[a]ct in a manner that respects and protects the dignity of the decedent and the decedent’s family.” There was sufficient evidence of standards of care of a cemetery performing a disinterment.

Finally, this court concluded that

Based on the evidence presented, and the inferences that could be drawn from that evidence, a reasonable fact finder could determine that Osiris breached its duty to exercise reasonable care by failing to have a mortician present to transfer [the son’s] remains to a new OBC when the OBC in which he was buried became compromised.

-CM