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 August 15, his body was stored for nearly a week inside a walk-in cooler normally used for beverages instead of a properly chilled morgue as she was promised.
The body became bloated and green as a result, and the family was unable to hold an open-coffin burial, “which was a long standing family custom and was what his family had desired,” according to the lawsuit. Marilyn Jones, her two daughters, and three grandkids are suing for $1 million.
Celebrity Cruises declined to comment, noting the sensitivity of the situation and “out of respect for the family.” The Celebrity Equinox, which sails year-round from Fort Lauderdale to the Caribbean, is flagged out of Malta and can transport around 3,000 passengers and 1,200 crew members.
According to the lawsuit, which was filed in Fort Lauderdale on Wednesday, when Robert Jones died, crew members gave his widow two options.
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 stored 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.
According to the complaint, the crew told her that if she picked Puerto Rico, she would have to travel with the body and then organize transportation for it and herself back to Florida. She was also advised that the island authorities might seek an autopsy, which would delay their return even more.
Jones chose the morgue because 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 morgue 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 suit.
Jones’ lawyers are requesting a jury trial.
