The case arose from a heartbreaking error by the Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office in Texas, which confused the bodies of Jose Gonzalez Jr., a San Diego truck driver who died March 20, 2020, and Jesse Gilbert Gonzales, who died the following day. The mix-up led to Gonzalez's body being mistakenly sent to a donor program and cremated, while his family received the wrong body for funeral services they had arranged through Community Mortuary in Chula Vista. The widow, Celina Gonzalez, and extended family members sued the mortuary for negligence and breach of contract, seeking damages for the devastating discovery when they opened the casket for viewing.
The Court of Appeal found that impracticability of performance is fundamentally an equitable defense that requires judicial, not jury, determination. As Acting Presiding Justice Do explained, the defense requires courts to assess 'whether justice requires a departure from the general rule that the obligor bear the risk that the contract may become more burdensome or less desirable' — a determination that calls for 'flexible discretion that characterized the courts of equity.' The court noted that two key elements of the defense require weighing 'competing equitable considerations that juries are not equipped to weigh and evaluate effectively,' including whether the non-occurrence of an event was a basic assumption of the parties' agreement.
The appellate court delivered sharp criticism of the trial court's handling of the impracticability defense, writing that 'determining what is unfair calls on [a decision-maker] to exercise the sort of flexible discretion that characterized the courts of equity—a kind of judgment that juries have not historically made, nor are well suited to make.' Acting Presiding Justice Do emphasized that while trial courts may seek advisory verdicts from juries on factual issues underlying equitable defenses, 'it is the duty of the trial court to make its own independent findings and to adopt or reject the findings of the jury as it deems proper.'
The procedural history revealed that after the family sued Community Mortuary, the mortuary raised impracticability as an affirmative defense to the breach of contract claim. San Diego County Superior Court Judge Richard S. Whitney initially struggled with whether to grant the mortuary's motion for nonsuit on the impracticability defense, calling it a 'very close call.' However, he ultimately submitted the defense to the jury, which found in favor of the mortuary. The jury also ruled for the mortuary on the negligence claim, finding no fault in the funeral home's identification procedures.
The family argued that Community Mortuary should have caught the error because the body arrived without a medical examiner's identification tag — what their expert called a 'red flag' under industry standards. The family's attorney pointed to testimony that every agent in the chain of custody must confirm body identity from a reliable source, and that Community had photographs of Jose and knew about his distinctive tattoos. The mortuary countered that its identification procedures met the standard of care, relying on paperwork that accompanied the body, including a burial permit from Texas and a body tag from the Texas mortuary that had handled the remains.
The appellate court affirmed the trial court's dismissal of breach of contract claims by extended family members, ruling they lacked standing as third-party beneficiaries. Acting Presiding Justice Do wrote that allowing non-contracting family members to sue for breach of contract 'would expand the scope of liability for providers in a way we believe to be inconsistent with reasonable expectations,' noting that family members already have recourse through negligence claims for emotional distress damages under established precedent from Christensen v. Superior Court.
On remand, the trial court must independently decide the merits of the mortuary's impracticability defense and may rely on evidence from the original trial or receive additional testimony. If the defense fails, the court must then try damages on the breach of contract claim, which may be submitted to a jury at either party's request. The appellate court noted that any factual findings from the jury's negligence verdict would be binding on the trial court's equitable determination, as 'adjudicated issues in earlier phases of a bifurcated trial are binding in later phases of trial.'