Reported / Citable
Background
Deidre Kollars, Peter Moreno, and Yvonne Rigal asserted negligence claims against MP II, Inc., doing business as Mission Park Funeral Chapels and Cemeteries, concerning the handling or location of Diana Moreno’s cremated remains. The undisputed evidence, as described by Justice Adrian A. Spears II, showed that Mission Park had no role in Diana’s cremation, funeral services, or original inurnment and was never entrusted with her remains for disposition.
Mission Park later discovered an urn that allegedly had been improperly buried through work performed by a third party before Mission Park became involved. The trial court entered judgment on the siblings’ claims, and Mission Park filed motions for new trial and to modify the judgment on May 13, 2025, followed by a notice of appeal on July 21, 2025.
The Court’s Holding
In this concurring and dissenting opinion, Justice Spears agreed with the majority that Mission Park’s post-judgment motions and notice of appeal were timely. He also concurred in the portion of the court’s judgment rendering a take-nothing judgment against Peter Moreno and Deidre Kollars.
Justice Spears disagreed, however, with the majority’s conclusion that Mission Park had a special relationship with Diana’s family and with its decision to remand Yvonne Rigal’s negligence claim for a new trial. Reading SCI Texas Funeral Services, Inc. v. Nelson as requiring the funeral-services provider to have directly assumed responsibility for the particular remains, he concluded that Mission Park owed no legal duty to the siblings because it neither handled Diana’s original disposition nor controlled the third party’s earlier work. He therefore would have rendered judgment that all three siblings take nothing on their negligence claims.
Key Takeaways
- Justice Spears agreed that Mission Park timely filed its post-judgment motions and notice of appeal.
- He concluded that merely discovering remains or relying on historical burial records does not create the special relationship required under Texas law for negligence-based mental-anguish damages arising from mishandled remains.
- He would have rendered a complete take-nothing judgment rather than remanding Yvonne Rigal’s negligence claim for a new trial.
Why It Matters
The separate opinion identifies a disputed boundary of Texas funeral-home liability: whether a later cemetery operator assumes a legal duty to a decedent’s family when it encounters a burial error created before its involvement. Justice Spears warned that the majority’s rule could make subsequent operators responsible for predecessors’ mistakes whenever they work at an existing burial site.
Because this is a concurring and dissenting opinion, Justice Spears’s no-duty analysis is not the court’s controlling holding. The court instead allowed Yvonne Rigal’s negligence claim to proceed to a new trial while rendering take-nothing judgments on the negligence claims of Peter Moreno and Deidre Kollars.