The family of a 75-year-old Providence woman filed a lawsuit accusing Rhode Island Hospital of releasing the wrong body to a funeral home, an error they say led them to hold a closed-casket burial for a stranger before the mistake was discovered days later.
The lawsuit, filed in Rhode Island Superior Court, describes a chain of paperwork and identification failures that ended with an exhumation and a second burial. The family says both Rhode Island Hospital and Bell Funeral Home mishandled their mother’s remains and robbed them of a dignified goodbye. The hospital acknowledged a morgue error, said it began an internal review and said an employee was terminated.
The woman at the center of the case is Emilia L. Severino, who relatives said died at Rhode Island Hospital on Dec. 30 after being admitted for smoke inhalation injuries from a Christmas Day house fire. The lawsuit says Severino was treated in the hospital’s Trauma Intensive Care Unit and that after she died, her body was moved to the hospital morgue. The family alleges she was left only partially clothed and still had medical devices and bandages attached, details that later became important when relatives say they were finally allowed to see her body after the mix-up came to light.
Severino’s relatives contacted Providence-based Bell Funeral Home to handle arrangements, the lawsuit says, and signed documents authorizing the funeral home to transfer and prepare her body. The family’s filing claims a key identification section of the paperwork was left incomplete, including a statement about whether next of kin had identified the body. On Jan. 15, Bell Funeral Home went to the hospital to pick up Severino, but the lawsuit says Rhode Island Hospital released the wrong remains while representing them as hers. The family says hospital employees signed paperwork identifying the body as Severino before it left the facility.
In the days that followed, the lawsuit says the funeral home asked the family to choose clothes for Severino’s burial and to drop off those items. The family says staff placed the hospital’s white body bag into a black body bag, then placed that bag into a casket. The family claims the funeral home never asked them to view the remains and never verified the identity itself, despite what they say would have been clear identifiers if the bag was opened, including tags and other markers showing the body belonged to someone else.
The lawsuit says two relatives tried to visually identify the remains, but were turned away. Bell Funeral Home told them the body was too decomposed to be viewed, the family alleges, a claim they say was untrue. The family contends the refusal was meant to prevent them from seeing what they describe as a careless handling of the burial clothing. In the lawsuit’s telling, the new clothes were not used to dress the body. Instead, the family says, the clothing was dropped into the casket still on hangers, with tags attached, placed on top of the zipped body bag.
On Jan. 19, the family held a graveside burial, believing Severino was inside the closed casket, the lawsuit says. During the service, the filing alleges, funeral home staff struggled to secure the lid because fabric or another material kept it from closing properly. As workers tried to fix the problem, the family says the casket lid was lifted and mourners saw the zipped black body bag and the unused clothing with tags and hangers still attached. The family says they were shocked by what they saw but still did not know the remains were not Severino’s. The casket was closed again and buried, the lawsuit says.
The next day, the family says, a call changed everything. The lawsuit claims Rhode Island Hospital informed relatives on Jan. 20 that it had released the wrong body. The family’s court filing describes how the hospital learned of the error only after another funeral home arrived to pick up a body that the hospital had already misidentified and released. Severino’s niece, Joselyn, told a local television station that the family did not learn they had buried the wrong person until they were contacted days later through the chain of calls involving the cemetery and funeral home.
The lawsuit alleges the hospital and funeral home initially wanted to quietly switch the bodies without informing the family. That did not happen, the filing says, because the cemetery would not exhume the casket without the family’s permission. Relatives agreed to the exhumation, and the wrongly buried body was removed and returned to the hospital, according to the lawsuit. The family says they then went to Rhode Island Hospital to identify Severino, describing her as still bearing medical lines, bandages and other signs of hospital treatment.
Bell Funeral Home owner Christine Cardoza disputed parts of the family’s account in an interview with a local television station and placed responsibility on the hospital. Cardoza said that when her staff picks up a body from a hospital, they rely on paperwork and tags, and that the paperwork they signed identified the person inside the bag. She also said hospital staff had trouble locating Severino and made multiple attempts before producing a body they claimed was the right one. “On the paperwork that we signed, it stated that she is the person inside of that body bag,” Cardoza said.
Cardoza also said she did not know at the time that Severino had severe burns. She said she believed the woman died from smoke inhalation, and said she was not told she was “burned from head to toe.” The family’s lawsuit and relatives’ statements say they requested a closed casket because of extensive burns. Cardoza said that after the exhumation, she returned to the hospital and raised concerns about identification because a body bag she was shown did not appear to be properly tagged. She said hospital staff removed gauze from the woman’s face at her request and that the remains were badly burned and unrecognizable.
On the question of why the body remained inside a bag at burial, Cardoza said the body stayed in a bag because of leaking fluids, but she said staff cut the clothing provided by the family and dressed Severino before burial. She also offered an apology to the family while maintaining that the hospital’s error set the chain of events in motion. “I’m completely sorry. There’s nothing I can do to make it better,” Cardoza said. “I trusted the paperwork and checked this woman out as the right person.” Bell Funeral Home did not provide a separate detailed statement in response to the lawsuit in the accounts reported publicly.
Rhode Island Hospital declined an on-camera interview request from the local station but issued a written statement acknowledging the mistake. The hospital said “an error occurred” in its morgue on Jan. 15 in which a decedent was released to the wrong funeral home, and said it contacted the impacted families to offer sympathies and apologies. The hospital said it immediately started a “comprehensive internal review,” terminated the employee involved and planned additional safeguards. The hospital also said patient privacy laws prevented it from sharing further details.
The family’s lawsuit accuses the hospital and funeral home of negligence and says relatives suffered severe emotional distress and mental anguish. The filing describes grief compounded by the discovery that the family had unknowingly buried the wrong person, then had to give permission to exhume the casket and return to the hospital to identify Severino. The lawsuit also claims Severino’s remains were returned to the cemetery without proper decorum, alleging the funeral home transported a body bag back to the gravesite and placed it into the casket before Severino was buried again.
The case arrives amid wider scrutiny in some states of how hospitals, morgues and funeral homes handle remains, with families increasingly turning to lawsuits when identification steps fail. In this case, the family’s claims focus on what they say were basic safeguards that should have prevented a mix-up, including matching paperwork to identification tags and allowing relatives to confirm identity when there is uncertainty. Cardoza’s comments highlight a competing view of the process, arguing that funeral homes depend on hospitals to provide the correct body and correct documentation at pickup.
No court dates were immediately announced in the public accounts of the lawsuit, and it was not clear whether the defendants had filed formal responses. The family is seeking a jury trial and damages. For now, the hospital says it is tightening morgue procedures, and the funeral home’s owner says she wants accountability for the initial mistake. The next public update is expected to come through court filings as the civil case moves forward.
Author note: Last updated February 21, 2026.