According to a legal lawsuit against Celebrity Cruises, an elderly man died on board a cruise ship and his body was left to fester in a drinks cooler for six days.
The family of Robert Jones, who was 78, has accused the cruise line of unlawfully storing his body after his death, which led to its decomposition. The claims were made in a lawsuit filed in federal court in Florida.
Celebrity Cruises is charged with concealing the absence of a functioning mortuary on board and hindering Jones’s wife from transporting her husband’s body to Puerto Rico for processing.
According to the allegation, a funeral director discovered the body in a bag on the cooler floor.
The plaintiffs, who include his wife, kids, and grandchildren, are asking for compensatory damages of $1 million.
According to the lawsuit, Jones passed away in the summer of 2022 while traveling on the Celebrity Equinox.
According to the complaint, his late wife Marilyn Jones was offered two alternatives for what to do with his body.
In San Juan, Puerto Rico, she had the option of having his body taken from the ship, or she could decide to keep it there until Fort Lauderdale, Florida, six days later.
The ship’s crew allegedly provided Jones with a list of justifications for rejecting the Puerto Rico option in the complaint.
They claimed that in accordance with the lawsuit, she would have to remain in San Juan and plan her own transportation to the US mainland for both herself and the body.
Additionally, it said Jones was informed that Puerto Rican officials might insist on an autopsy, which would cause a delay in the body’s return.
Jones opted to retain the body in the morgue rather than the other alternative. Because deaths occur so frequently on cruise ships, morgues are a legal requirement. They can preserve bodies for several weeks without their rotting.
Jones’s body was instead placed in a beverages cooler since the morgue wasn’t functional so instead they put it in the drinks cooler. This failed to properly chill the body, according to the complaint.
When a funeral home employee and a Broward County sheriff’s deputy went to retrieve the body, they discovered it had been illegally stored.
The lawsuit stated that the cooler where the funeral director discovered Mr. Jones’ body “had drinks placed outside of the cooler and was not at a temperature which was suitable nor proper for preserving a dead body to avoid decomposition.”
The body was laying in a bag on a pallet on the floor of the cooler, not on a bed or a medical table, according to the lawsuit.
According to the lawsuit, the body could not be made presentable for an open-casket wake and funeral because of the improper storage, depriving the family of the funeral they desired.
By failing to make sure that the mortuary was operational and the remains were stored carefully, Celebrity Cruises is charged with acting “recklessly, intentionally, and wantonly, and without caring for the Jones family’s loved one.”
A request for comment was not immediately answered by Celebrity Cruises.
