Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

A High Court judge has or­dered Cas­ket Em­po­ri­um Fu­ner­al Home in To­ba­go to re­lease the body of a man who passed away more than a month ago.

In a late night sit­ting on Tues­day, Jus­tice Ava­son Quin­lan-Williams grant­ed an in­junc­tion against the fu­ner­al home, or­der­ing them to re­lease the body of Odwin Thomas, who died on Ju­ly 28.

The mat­ter was filed by Thomas’ son Han­dell, who was rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Mar­tin George.

Thomas al­leged that on Au­gust 3 he had a meet­ing with the own­er of the fu­ner­al home, Shirelle Clarke, who claimed that he could fi­nance his fa­ther’s fu­ner­al arrange­ments by us­ing an in­voice that would be pre­pared by the fu­ner­al home.

Thomas said he signed an agree­ment com­mit­ting to pay­ing the fees when the funds be­came avail­able.

How­ev­er, when Thomas could not get fi­nanc­ing from fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, he asked to have his fa­ther’s body re­turned on Au­gust 9.
He claimed that Clarke de­mand­ed a pay­ment of $16,000 be­fore re­leas­ing the body, cit­ing an em­balm­ing fee of $6,000 and a stor­age fee of $10,000 at $2,000 per day.

Thomas con­test­ed these ad­di­tion­al fees, claim­ing he had not au­tho­rised em­balm­ing and was un­aware of the dai­ly stor­age fee.

But Clarke claimed Thomas agreed to make the pay­ment in the signed doc­u­ment and that he was re­spon­si­ble for all fees.

Thomas ar­gued that the agree­ment did not spec­i­fy any fig­ures and that he had not agreed to a stor­age fee of $2,000 per day.

He told the court that oth­er fu­ner­al homes con­firmed that the stan­dard for a stor­age fee was around $250 per day.

Thomas’ lawyers sent a let­ter de­mand­ing the re­lease of the body up­on pay­ment of a stor­age fee at the in­dus­try rate of $250 per day, which amount­ed to $1,750 at that time.
The body was not re­leased and this prompt­ed Thomas’ at­tor­neys to file an in­junc­tion.

The court or­dered the fu­ner­al home to re­lease the body to Thomas so that he could make arrange­ments with an­oth­er fu­ner­al home for the bur­ial.

As part of the judg­ment, Thomas was re­quired to pay $1,750, the amount ten­dered as a rea­son­able stor­age fee, as op­posed to the fu­ner­al home’s bill of $56,000, for stor­age and em­balm­ing.