Lawsuit: Cruise line allowed passenger’s body to decompose.
Celebrity Cruises is facing a lawsuit from a widow and her family, who claim the company mishandled her husband’s body after he died onboard a ship. The plaintiff, Marilyn Jones, and her family, are seeking $1m in damages and claiming that the company’s actions left her husband’s body in an unacceptably decomposed state, causing them “extreme emotional trauma”. The lawsuit was filed in Florida last week.
Jones’ husband of 55 years, Robert Jones, died of a heart attack on 15 August 2017 when the couple were travelling on the Celebrity Equinox, which cruises the Caribbean on a year-round basis. According to the lawsuit, his body was stored for nearly a week inside a walk-in cooler normally used for beverages, instead of a properly chilled morgue, which the family were promised he would be kept in.
The lawsuit alleges that the way in which the body was stored was unsanitary and cruel, meaning that it was left bloated and green, and therefore, the family was unable to have an open-casket funeral. The cruise line did not respond to a request for comment on the case, citing its sensitivity and out of respect for the family.
The lawsuit claims that Marilyn Jones was told by crew members onboard that, following her husband’s death, she had two choices. She could take his body off at the next stop in Puerto Rico or store it in the morgue until the ship returned to Fort Lauderdale in six days’ time. She reportedly picked the latter option because the crew had warned her that transporting the body to Puerto Rico could have led to delays. However, the lawsuit says that when the ship arrived back in Florida, the morgue appeared to be out of service and the body was found inside a walk-in drink cooler, in a bag on a palette, at temperatures that were significantly warmer than the near-freezing temperatures that are required to properly store a body.
The Jones family has been seeking justice since the death of Robert. It had expected Celebrity Cruises to provide the highest standards of service and treatment for passengers, particularly in the event of a bereavement. The alleged mishandling of Robert’s body has caused the family significant distress, as they have visualised his decomposed body and believed that he had been “callously and casually left in a beverage cooler, stripping him of his dignity”. The family’s attorneys have requested a jury trial. The Celebrity Equinox is flagged out of Malta and can carry almost 3,000 passengers and 1,200 crew members.
