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| Marcel Strigberger |
Though not a common occurrence, such as lawyers getting sued (for different reasons) it is not as uncommon as one might think. To wit:
Recently a 45-year-old gentleman in India was about to be cremated when he suddenly woke up, looking stunned. I suppose his reaction was not unreasonable.
Also, a lady 91-year-old in Poland made noises while in the morgue. Fortunately, surprised workers rescued her. I suppose they were also stunned. No clue how they or the lady reacted otherwise. I can’t say if I would have been present, I would have more information; I am not overly familiar with Polish swear words.
The problem is global. A 78-year-old Mississippi man started to protest as he was about to be embalmed. Don’t know what he said but it’s a safe bet it started with “Hey y’all.”
There must be some action these victims can take against doctors, undertakers or whoever should have been satisfied they did not meet the status of that Monty Python parrot.
Is it malpractice? This victim clearly and literally can say they spent the night in the cooler.
I Googled to see if there were any cases on the subject, entering, “Legal, I’m being buried alive.”
The only listing I got was about a lawyer who received a comment reading, “Declutter your messy desk.” Not helpful.
Actually, the concerns about being buried alive go back ages. Towards the end of the 1800s, a group formed called the London Association for the Prevention of Premature Burial. They campaigned for doctors to carefully examine people who supposedly expired as such examinations were not the norm. This blasé attitude could be frightening. If I’d have a nasty boss, I would think twice before closing my office door and taking a cat nap. No way, Jose.
Other concerned persons made suggestions such as attaching a bell with a cord to the “deceased” to enable him to try to attract attention in the event that he was only hibernating. A tour guide at a cemetery tour I took in New Orleans noted that this practice spawned the expression “dead ringer.” Who knows? The problem I see is they’d have to have attendants present 24/7 to keep an ear out for that frantic distress call. I suppose the guy working nights could literally claim he was doing the graveyard shift. And if he screws up and is negligently inattentive at trial when asked he’d no doubt say “I was listening, but it didn’t ring a bell.”
What was comforting was that scene in the film The Wizard of Oz, where the coroner does a post-mortem on the Wicked Witch of the East. He even announces his findings musically.:
As Coroner, I must aver,
I thoroughly examined her
And she’s not only merely dead
She’s really most sincerely dead!
This type of vigour is certainly reassuring. Maybe that London Association had some influence on the coroner’s diligence. Nonetheless, if it were me, I would find it awkward to submit to this type of examination by a singing Munchkin.
Author Edgar Allan Poe also had an intense fear of being buried alive. Then again, I have an intense fear after reading his macabre writings. I never read them upon a midnight dreary while I ponder weak and weary. I actually make sure. And my windows are closed for fear of inviting a raven.
I have mentioned only a handful of instances of not-so-dead people being deemed gone.
Will some lawyers take up the cause and sue those negligent enough to wrongly certify the person’s live status? Possibly. It would not surprise me to see some firms advertising on buses, with ads reading something like, “You’re back? Call us first.”
Marcel Strigberger retired from his Greater Toronto Area litigation practice and continues the more serious business of humorous author and speaker. His book, Boomers, Zoomers, and Other Oomers: A Boomer-biased Irreverent Perspective on Aging, is available on Amazon (e-book) and in paper version. His new(!) book First, Let’s Kill the Lawyer Jokes: An Attorney’s Irreverent Serious Look at the Legal Universe, is available on Amazon, Apple and other book places. Visit www.marcelshumour.com. Follow him on X: @MarcelsHumour.
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