A Florida woman is accusing Celebrity Cruises staff of mishandling her husband’s corpse, which allegedly caused it to severely decompose, according to a new lawsuit.
Two days after the Celebrity Equinox cruise ship departed Fort Lauderdale for an eight-day trip to Caribbean ports, a 79-year-old passenger died. Robert Jones died of a heart attack while on the cruise on August 15, 2022.
The lawsuit claims that cruise ship staff stored Jones’ body inside a beverage cooler. The lawsuit alleges cruise ship staff informed Jones’ wife that her 55-year-old husband would be kept in the ship’s morgue for the next six days until the ship docked in Fort Lauderdale.
The wife, Marilyn Jones, says cruise ship staff dissuaded her from removing her husband’s body from the ship when it docked in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The suit claims cruise ship staff warned the widow there was a “50/50 chance” the coroner’s office would take possession of the body for an autopsy before turning it over to a funeral home, according to NBC News. He was also allegedly told he would have to find transportation back to the United States if he got off the ship.
“This was particularly distressing to Mrs. Jones, who is elderly and was traveling alone with her husband,” the lawsuit states.
The federal lawsuit says Jones’ body was not in the ship’s morgue, but was “lying in a bag on a pallet on the floor.”
The lawsuit alleges that the beverage cooler was not cold enough to preserve the corpse and caused physical indignities to Jones’ body.
The lawsuit claims Jones’ body was in “advanced stages of decomposition” due to the conditions in the beverage cooler.
The Associated Press reported, “This left the body swollen and green, and the family was unable to have an open casket funeral” which was a long-standing family custom and what her family had wanted, she says the demand
“By allowing Mr. Jones’ body to decompose while on the boat to such a state that his family was unable to hold a funeral and wake service, denying his wife of 55 years, children, grandchildren, friends and community the closure of his deserving family and community, a practice that was part of his family’s culture,” the lawsuit states.
The Celebrity Equinox docked in Fort Lauderdale nearly a week after Jones died of a heart attack. The body was recovered by a funeral home worker and a Broward County sheriff’s deputy.
The lawsuit alleges that the family suffered “extreme trauma upon viewing Mr. Jones’ horribly decomposed body, and learning that her husband and father was callously and casually left in a beverage cooler, stripping him of his dignity”.
Marilyn Jones, her two daughters and three grandchildren are seeking $1 million in damages.
Celebrity Cruises said: “Due to the sensitivity of the alleged incidents and out of respect for the family, we decline to comment on the matter.”
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