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A family in Fresno California has been awarded over $40,000 in a lawsuit against Mountain View Cemetery, also in Fresno. The family, descendants of the ethnic Hmong of Laos, says that the cemetery sold them a grave that was already in use.

The family noticed that there were bones and the remains of two casket handles in the grave of their patriarch Xia Yang, whose three-day traditional Hmong funeral was cut short due to the findings.

The state Department of Consumer Affairs is investigating whether or not Mountain View Cemetery “recycled” a grave. Recycling of graves has occurred throughout the country and some 500 cases have been reported. The DCA spokesman Kevin Flanagan said that they would continue to investigate the cemetery. He said that the incident is especially troubling because the cemetery was fined two years ago for losing the location of a grave.

When initially confronted by the Yangs the Mountain View cemetery offered the family to reimburse the cost of the gravesite, about $2,000.

Xia Yang was a well-known shaman, or healer, in the local Hmong community, the largest Hmong population in the world outside of Southeast Asia. The discovery of the additional bones and metal is particularly troublesome to the Hmong who believe people should be buried in the earth without metal or any other foreign objects.

Fresno County Superior Court Judge M. Bruce Smith said that the evidence of grave recycling was insufficient. The jury awarded the Yang family far less than they were asking, some $5 million in damages. The state is seeking further information about the practices of the cemetery in a separate investigation stemming from the Yang’s case.

Cases involving the reuse of gravesites by cemeteries can result in large fines and/or the revocation of the cemetery’s licenses.