Some years ago, I was contacted by an attorney and asked to evaluate his client, the plaintiff in a lawsuit. I’ll call her Mrs. Jones, a 35-year-old widow, who was suing a funeral home.
A year earlier, her presumably healthy 40-year-old husband, died suddenly of a massive heart attack while at the gym.
At our consultation, Mrs. Jones was obviously bereaved and quite sad. This was not out of the ordinary, because the bereavement process often takes a full two years. But, what was severely complicating this process; occasioning the lawsuit; and bringing her to my office was the following unusual story: