The class action suit was filed in Boston federal court by a national class action law firm, against more than a dozen New England funeral homes and related businesses, along with the owners of the closed Bayview Crematory. The suit charges that funeral home operators knew or should have known that Bayview was combining bodies during cremation and improperly handling the remains.

One of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs states: "To save $75 per deceased body, these and other funeral home operators turned over control of bodies under their charge to an unlicensed low budget crematory based in Seabrook, NH, where they were routinely mishandled."

"Many decent people entrusted their deceased family members' remains to these facilities for what they expected would be a dignified and lawful cremation," said one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs. "Anyone who dealt with any of these funeral homes in the last several years has reason to be worried."

The complaint alleges that thousands of New England families cannot be sure that the high volume, low price crematorium gave them back the correct ashes, because the funeral homes allowed Bayview employees to pick up bodies in a box truck, take them to the facility where multiple bodies were cremated together, then return the remains with no certainty that families would, as promised, receive the ashes of their loved ones.

The lead plaintiff is Lorraine Hunt, whose father, Robert Lowe Cashman, died on April 6, 2004 and whose body was entrusted to a funeral home in Quincy, MA that in turn handed off the body to Bayview for cremation. Bayview issued a cremation certificate indicating a cremation date of April 8, 2004.

"My father was a proud World War II veteran," Ms. Hunt said. "He served in the Navy. We held his memorial service on the ship where he served, the Battleship North Carolina, in Wilmington Harbor. It was a very dignified ceremony, and at the end we scattered what we believed to be his ashes into the ocean. My memory of my father and of his funeral will be haunted forever by what I now know -- that those were likely not his ashes at all."

The suit names Bayview and its operators Derek A. Wallace and Linda Stokes, as well as the American Society for Cremation, American Cremation Society and the American Society for Funeral Services, all based in Haverhill, MA, and Cremation Society of Massachusetts, based in Quincy, MA.

Roger Hamel, the owner of Cremation Society of Massachusetts named in the suit, is co-owner of Hamel Wickens & Troupe Funeral Home in Quincy, where Ms. Hunt took her deceased father. Bayview Crematory handled at least 60 percent of Hamel Wickens' cremation business.

Other funeral providers named in the litigation include Commonwealth Cremation and Shipping Service, Boston; Common Wealth Funeral Service, Brighton; Dracut Funeral Home, Dracut; Farrah Funeral Home, Lawrence; Hart-Wallace Funeral Home, Lawrence; Keefe Funeral Home, Cambridge; Scatmacchia Funeral Home, Haverville; Simplicity Burial & Cremation (formerly known as Oceanside Family Funeral Home) with locations in Newburyport and Salisbury; and William F. Spencer Funeral Services, Boston.

"Additional funeral homes likely will be added to the lawsuit", the attorneys said.

The lawsuit seeks damages for negligence, intentional emotional distress and other alleged breaches of trust. The suit alleges that Bayview contracted with funeral homes for a $190 package deal, in which Bayview sent a truck to pick up bodies, hauled them to Seabrook for cremation and then delivered ashes back to the funeral homes. If funeral homes followed standard industry practice, transporting the bodies themselves and witnessing the cremation, it would cost as much as $265, the complaint states.