A devastated New Jersey widow blasted a local cemetery after her beloved husband was allegedly buried in the wrong plot, according to a new lawsuit.
Debra Poller accused Stanhope Union Cemetery in Netcong of burying her 69-year-old husband, Alan, in a neighboring plot instead of the family gravesite she had purchased after he died on Nov. 30, according to a lawsuit filed last week and obtained by NJ.com.
The grieving Lake Hopatcong woman said she only spotted the cemetery’s alarming blunder on Dec. 3.
Poller slammed the burial site for failing to act with “reasonable care and skill” when it entombed her husband, a Hungarian immigrant who arrived in the US at 17 in 1973, claiming it added to her already intense emotional distress, according to the suit and his obituary.
She is suing the cemetery, claiming its mistake has caused her “severe emotional distress and mental anguish and [that she] has been denied her right to grieve.”
The widow accused the graveyard of negligence and said its actions were “intentional, extreme, reckless and outrageous.”
Alan, a father of two, was a master stone mason in Hungary before settling in Jersey City and then relocating to Colorado, where he met his wife and started two businesses, his obituary said.
The couple late relocated to Lake Hopatcong in 2003, where he enjoyed golfing with his son and friends, watching wildlife on the lake, attending car shows, and spending time with family.
“Al was very proud to be an American,” his obituary said.
Poller is demanding a jury trial and monetary damages.
