A Chicago-area man is suing the cemetery where is mother is buried after he found her wooden casket poking through a shallow grave.

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Sidney Clark said he went to visit his mother's grave in Thornton, Ill., last year on Mother's Day and found the edges of a wooden casket poking out -- and signs that animals had dug into the casket. He said the line of a body bag was visible, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

The lawsuit, recently filed in Cook County Circuit Court, demands that Homewood Memorial Gardens compensate Clark for his trauma.

The cemetery's owner, Tom Flynn, said the problem was caused by vandalism.

"It was on a slope, after some rain, and somebody pulled dirt away from it and uncovered it," Flynn told the Sun-Times.

The newspaper said state law says welfare burials only have to be 18 inches deep, unlike the standard six feet.