Cruise line let passenger’s body decompose, the lawsuit says

A widow and her family are suing Celebrity Cruises for allegedly mishandling her husband’s body after he died on a ship last year, alleging that it was left to deteriorate and that they suffered tremendous mental anguish. According to a federal lawsuit filed in Florida, after Marilyn Jones’ husband of 55 years, Robert Jones, died of a heart attack onboard the Celebrity Equinox on Aug. 15, his body was stored for nearly a week inside a walk-in cooler normally used for beverages instead of a properly chilled mortuary as she was promised.

That left the body bloated and green, and the family was unable to have an open-coffin funeral “which was a long-standing family custom and was what his family had desired,” the lawsuit says. Marilyn Jones, her two daughters, and three grandchildren are seeking $1 million in damages. Celebrity Cruises declined to comment, citing the case’s sensitivity and “out of respect for the family.” The Celebrity Equinox, which cruises the Caribbean year-round out of Fort Lauderdale, is flagged out of Malta and can carry almost 3,000 passengers and 1,200 crew members.

The family was extremely traumatized by visualizing Mr. Jones’s body horrifically decomposed

According to the lawsuit filed in Fort Lauderdale on Wednesday, crew members gave his widow two options when Robert Jones died. They allegedly told Marilyn Jones, 78, of the Florida Panhandle, that his body might be carried off the ship at the next stop, Puerto Rico, or preserved in a mortuary until the ship returned to Fort Lauderdale in six days. Most major cruise ships contain a mortuary since passenger deaths do occur. The crew told her that if she chose Puerto Rico, she would need to go with the body and then arrange transportation for it and herself back to Florida, the suit says. She was also told that the island authority would perhaps require an autopsy, which could further delay their return.

Jones chose the mortuary since she was alone. However, according to the lawsuit, it is not where the body was kept. When the ship docked in Florida, a funeral home staffer, and a Broward County sheriff’s deputy discovered the mortuary was reportedly closed. According to the suit, the body was discovered in a walk-in drink cooler in a bag on a palette. According to the report, the cooler was far warmer than the near-freezing temperatures required for proper body storage, and Robert Jones’ remains were in “advanced stages of decomposition.”

The family was “extremely traumatized by visualizing Mr. Jones’s body horrifically decomposed, and knowing their husband and father was callously and casually left in a beverage cooler, stripping him of his dignity,” according to the claim. Jones’ lawyers are requesting a jury trial.