Lawsuit: Ex-Tennessee funeral director continued to exploit grieving immigrant families

The exterior of Saddler Funeral Home in Lebanon, one of two funeral homes at which Reid Van Ness was storing bodies he had promised to send to other countries. (Photo: John Partipilo)

A Tennessee funeral director surrendered his license in 2020 after multiple complaints alleging he took money from immigrant families then failed to ship the remains of loved ones overseas for burial.

Now, new legal filings in an ongoing federal lawsuit show the state’s Department of Commerce and Insurance has received a “litany of complaints” against Reid Van Ness for failing to deliver on promised funeral services to Spanish-speaking residents of Tennessee and Kentucky in the years after losing his license. 

Van Ness, the subject of a 2021 Tennessee Lookout investigation, was among a small number of Spanish-speaking funeral directors in Tennessee who offered services to families seeking to ship bodies for burial overseas. 

A Tennessee funeral director made promises to immigrant families; he didn’t deliver

The Lookout investigation found that Van Ness had instead left multiple bodies to decay in coolers in Middle Tennessee funeral homes for periods that ranged between two to 11 months while family members frantically pressed him for information about their loved ones’ whereabouts. 

He falsified shipping documents, stopped answering families’ calls and left some families waiting for months to bury family members, state records showed. Among the grieving and distraught families were the parents of an 18-month old infant who died in a Nashville hospital and the mother of a 17-year-old boy who died by suicide.

At least five families filed suit against Van Ness and four funeral homes that agreed to store bodies for him. A state consumer alert issued in 2021 urged residents to report Van Ness to law enforcement after complaints he was approaching Spanish-speaking residents in Rutherford County to offer funeral services.

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Van Ness is now fighting the state in federal court to be able to continue to provide volunteer funeral service, arguing he has a First Amendment right to serve as a “community death care advocate.” 

Van Ness claimed the state’s Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers is illegally trying to restrict his freedom of religion by prohibiting him from participating in funeral services. He says he serves as a volunteer – a claim that is contrary to the complaints the board says it has received that Van Ness has accepted payment for his services. 

Van Ness “is part of a growing national movement rethinking the practices, customs, and approaches surrounding death,” the lawsuit said. 

“Mr. Van Ness shares his knowledge about end-of-life options with families to help them put their own end-of-life plan in place that is best for them and their loved ones. By engaging in these difficult but important conversation(s), he can give families the practical, emotional, and nontechnical support that funeral directors do not typically provide,” the lawsuit said. 

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An attorney representing Van Ness could not be reached for comment about the lawsuit. A spokesperson for the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance, which oversees the state’s funeral board, declined to comment on ongoing litigation.

In their legal response, the Department of Commerce and Insurance noted it had received complaints about Van Ness accepting payments for bungled funeral services between 2021 and 2023 after he had surrendered his license. 

In 2022, the state funeral board warned Van Ness he could not speak to consumers seeking funeral services, medical examiners, or undertake any actions relating to providing funeral, embalming or securing grave plots in Tennessee.

But throughout 2022 and 2023 the state’s funeral board “obtained evidence of various instances of Van Ness: accepting payment to arrange, manage, and perform funeral directing services; requesting to embalm and prepare loved ones of the deceased…and holding himself out as a licensed funeral director under another individual’s name.”

The lawsuit is scheduled for trial in June 2026.
Reid Van Ness