Bonaparte v. Fraternal Funeral Home

An undertaker, over the protest of the surviving wife, holds the dead body of the husband and thereafter embalms the same without the consent or approval of the wife, and upon demand of the wife, refuses to deliver the body until the fees are paid. Can such wife, upon such facts, recover punitive damages?

It was stated in the oral argument that the background of the case disclosed the business rivalry of competitive undertakers for posses sion of tbe body of the deceased. It was said of old that “Michael, the archangel, when contending with the devil, he disputed about the body of Moses,”…