The High Court of Justice of the Canary Islands has ratified as valid the disciplinary dismissal of a driver from a Tenerife funeral home who delivered a wrong corpse to a family at a wake, which constitutes "the worst mistake that can be made in this profession", according to the company.
The company carried out the labor dismissal considering that the operator had incurred in a very serious offense in the exercise of his duties in December 2023, during the collection of a deceased person at the Hospital de Ofra with destination to the Güímar funeral home.
The worker omitted the mandatory verification of the body's identity by not presenting it at the wake to the relatives because they did not want to see him at that time.
Once the error was confirmed, the worker took the body to Guía de Isora and returned to Güímar with the correct deceased, which generated great discomfort in the two affected families.
The company considers that the driver breached his obligations because he should have presented the body to at least one of the relatives, even if the others did not want to see it.
The funeral home maintained that "confusing the deceased is one of the worst mistakes that can be made in this profession, we are talking about people who are going through one of the most difficult moments of their lives, and it represents negligence that cannot be tolerated".
The entity has branded the incident as inadmissible negligence for violating the company's ethical code and disregarding the obligation to provide quality care.
The company's internal protocols establish as the first and most important task the verification of identity by means of the bracelet or the national identity document, and "as a last resort, the family will be bothered for them to recognize him/her only if there is no other remedy".
The operator argued in his defense that the dismissal was excessive and could be replaced by a warning or a temporary suspension as proportional punishment for his error.
The employee attributed the mistake to a reasonable reliance on the previous work of his colleague and to the exceptional refusal of the family to see the body.
The funeral home insisted that the worker has committed one of the worst errors of the profession, causing very unpleasant situations at extremely delicate moments.
