Two years ago a trio of San Antonio plaintiff lawyers filed a lawsuit against a funeral home company that sought to compel the defendant to answer a simple but disturbing question: How could it possibly manage to lose the body of 25-year-old Julie Mott?

Sadly, the litigation has never produced a satisfactory answer for their clients, Julie's parents Tim and Shallote Mott.

But on Feb. 13, the attorneys convinced a Bexar County jury that the funeral home company was negligent for failing to secure Julie Mott's body, awarding her parents $8 million in mental anguish damages because they were never allowed to cremate her remains.

“It's bittersweet in that we were hoping we would uncover the testimony that would give the Motts closure,'' said Alex Katzman, a San Antonio lawyer who represented the Motts along with his St. Mary's University School of Law classmate Ron Salazar, and their mutual longtime friend Mark Greenwald.

The Motts alleged in their lawsuit that Mission Park Funeral Homes and Chapels (MPII Inc.) was negligent because it lost their daughter's body sometime between her Aug. 15, 2015, funeral and scheduled Aug. 16, 2015, cremation. The lawsuit also alleged the MPII Inc. refused to tell the Motts where their daughter's body was.

Instead of getting answers, the three plaintiffs attorneys ended up facing off against a team of 16 attorneys representing MPII Inc. that consistently resisted discovery requests.

“I can't tell you how many motions to compel we had to file just to get responses. The funeral home really dug in their heels at us to get information — simple things like what are your policies, how do you train?” Salazar said.

And the strange case became scandalous when MPII Inc. filed a response to the lawsuit that proposed that Julie Mott's body was stolen by her ex-boyfriend.

“It's made international news from the beginning,” Salazar said of the case. “We took over 50 deposition in the case . . . we had innumerable hearings.”

After refusing a $1.6 million settlement offer from the defendants, Salazar said the Motts decided to take their case to trial.

MPII Inc., which owns 14 funeral homes and cemeteries in central Texas, alleged during the three-week long trial that Mott's ex-boyfriend broke into one of its funeral parlors after Mott's services on August 15, 2015, and took her body because he didn't want it cremated. The company also designated the ex-boyfriend as a responsible third party in the case.

The San Antonio police have made no arrests in connection with the disappearance of Mott's body.

But the defense theory didn't hold up after Katzman and Salazar grilled company officials at trial about security issues at their funeral home and the lack of chain of custody documentation for Mott's body.

“They're claiming that a body was stolen. Well, was it during daytime or after the business was closed? And that led us to discover that their security was beyond abysmal,” Katzman said. “They had one lock for all of the doors. They had one security code for the facility that hadn't been changed since it was installed in 1985 — that every employee and former employee had.''

The jury concluded in its verdict that MPII Inc. was negligent because its premises presented an unreasonable risk of harm. The jury also found that Mott's body had not been unlawfully appropriated by either the ex-boyfriend or an unknown third party.

“It was a total victory for the Motts because we were able to demonstrate that there was no evidence that Julie's body was stolen. That narrows the focus down to the funeral home to explain what happened,” Salazar said.

Ricardo Reyna, a partner in San Antonio's Brock Person Guerra Reyna who was the lead attorney for MPII Inc., did not return a call for comment.

To win the $8 million in damages, the plaintiff attorneys argued to the jury that their clients were permanently stuck in their grief process — testimony they developed by using one of the defendant's own experts.

“We really had to develop the idea that our rituals and our beliefs and the respect that we show is borne out by love and the notion that what happens to somebody you love's body is incredibly important,” Salazar said.

“That was affirmed by the defendant's psychiatrist who confirmed in testimony that [the Motts] had suffered severe emotional loss,” Salazar said. “And the defense expert also confirmed that as a result of the loss of the body, they were unable to move through the stages of grief. Therefore they were stuck in the process.”

Greenwald, whose daughter was friends with Julie Mott during high school, said the lawsuit was his clients' only hope for getting answers about what happened to their daughter's body.

“Ultimately we could not get answers. The jury was clearly angered and horrified at how the funeral home was operated and the inability to explain what happened,” Greenwald said. “Julie Mott deserves better than this end. Her family will never get over the loss of her body. Nobody could, if they have a heart and a soul.”

“This case will haunt me until the day I die,” Greenwald added. “It was and is a horror movie but unlike a movie it is truly real.”