A San Antonio appeals court has wiped out most of a jury's more than $1 million verdict against Mission Park Funeral Chapels and Cemeteries over an urn that was destroyed during a 2021 burial service, ordering a new trial for just one of three Bexar County siblings who sued. The case centers on Diana Jane Moreno, who died on September 30, 2005, and whose ashes were interred in 2009 at San Jose Burial Park — only to be unearthed and scattered by an excavator more than a decade later.
How the Urn Was Destroyed
According to the San Antonio Express-News, the siblings alleged that Mission Park carelessly unearthed the wrong burial plot in 2021 while preparing for a service for Pedro G. Moreno Jr. A cemetery caretaker dug the new plot with an excavator rather than a shovel, and the excavator's arm struck and destroyed Diana Jane Moreno's urn, spreading her ashes into the dirt and grass nearby. A jury later found Mission Park negligent in the incident.
City records reportedly had the wrong location listed for Diana Moreno's urn, a detail that fed into Mission Park's defense. The funeral home had sought to designate the City of San Antonio as a responsible third party in the case, since the city owned and operated San Jose Burial Park in 2009 and later leased the cemetery to Mission Park. The Express-News reports that the city may share responsibility for the incident, though that has not been legally established. A 2006 audit from the San Antonio City Auditor described San Jose Burial Park as roughly 130 acres and owned by the city, and a separate city ordinance authorized a 25-year lease of the cemetery to MPII Inc., doing business as Mission Park.
The Original Verdict and What the Appeals Court Changed
In January 2025, a jury awarded a combined $1.025 million to the three siblings — Deidre Kollars, Yvonne Rigal and Peter Moreno — after state District Judge Antonia Toni Arteaga ruled that jurors would decide only whether Mission Park was negligent. Kollars was awarded $175,000 and Peter Moreno $350,000, according to the same report.
The 4th Court of Appeals has now rendered a take-nothing judgment for Mission Park on Kollars' and Peter Moreno's claims, ruling their testimony did not meet the legal standard for compensable mental anguish. The court set aside the $500,000 award to Yvonne Rigal but ordered a new trial on her claim rather than dismissing it outright. Justice Adrian A. Spears II dissented from that part of the ruling, concluding all three siblings should take nothing and that Rigal's claim should have been dismissed alongside her siblings'.
Rigal's case had included testimony that she experienced breakdowns in the shower triggered by memories of the incident and that she sought grief counseling afterward. Her counselor and her daughter described her crying, anxiety and depression stemming from the ordeal, per the Express-News account.
Part of a Pattern at Mission Park
This is not the first time a San Antonio jury has hit Mission Park with a major verdict tied to grieving families. In the case of Julie Mott, whose body disappeared before cremation and has never been found, her parents were awarded $8 million after a jury found the funeral home negligent. In a separate case, the family of Mary Lou Salinas filed a negligence lawsuit alleging Mission Park mixed up her body with that of Catalina R. Cervantes in November 2020; the Cervantes family's sons settled a negligence lawsuit with Mission Park in April 2025 after their lawyer had sought more than $3.6 million in damages, though the settlement amount was not disclosed.
Mission Park is co-owned by Richard “Dick” Tips and Kristin Tips, who served as chair of the Texas Funeral Service Commission starting in May 2024 after Gov. Greg Abbott appointed her to the commission in 2017. Tips pushed legislation that would have limited lawsuits against funeral homes, though none of those bills ultimately advanced.
A Push to Cap Damages Statewide
The litigation against Mission Park has unfolded alongside a broader legislative effort in Texas to limit funeral-home liability. State Sen. Donna Campbell introduced a bill that would cap funeral-service providers' mental-anguish liability at the lesser of $50,000 or three times the cost of the funeral service, and the measure was referred to the Texas Senate State Affairs Committee in March 2025. The bill, which died in committee, proposed adding Chapter 77A to the Civil Practice and Remedies Code, including a section titled Limited Liability for Mental Anguish Damages, according to the Texas Legislature.
