Jump to
The corpse of an elderly man left to rot for six days in a cooler aboard a cruise ship after he died on board, according to a civil lawsuit against Celebrity Cruises.
In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court in Florida, the circle of relatives of Robert Jones, 78, accuses the cruise line of improperly storing his frame after his death, causing it to decompose.
The Miami New Times the first publication to report on the trial.
The lawsuit accuses Celebrity of concealing the fact that it did not have a functioning morgue on board and of deterring Jones’ wife from taking her husband’s frame to remedy herself in Puerto Rico.
The frame discovered through a funeral home employee’s lie in a bag on the refrigerator floor, according to the complaint.
The plaintiffs, his wife, daughters and grandchildren, receive $1 million in compensatory damages.
The lawsuit says Jones died of a central attack aboard the Celebrity Equinox in the summer of 2022.
His wife, Marilyn Jones, had two characteristics about what to do with her expired husband’s body, according to the complaint.
You may simply dispose of your shipping frame in San Juan, Puerto Rico, or leave it on board until the shipment arrives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, six days later.
According to the lawsuit, the ship’s workforce gave Jones a list of reasons not to take the Puerto Rico option.
They said this would require her to be in San Juan and prepare for her and the frame to be transported to the Americas, according to the complaint.
He also alleged that Jones had been informed that the Puerto Rican government insisted on an autopsy, delaying the return of the body.
The other option to remain the frame in the morgue, which Jones chose. Cruise ships are legally required to have morgues because deaths on board are so frequent. They can store bodies for weeks without decomposing.
However, according to the complaint, the morgue was taken out of service and Jones’ frame was placed in a refrigerator that was not blood-free enough to refrigerate a frame.
The complaint alleges that a funeral home worker and a Broward County sheriff’s deputy went to retrieve the frame and discovered it was improperly stored.
“The cooler in which Mr. Jones’ body was discovered through the funeral home worker had beverages placed outside the cooler and not at a sufficient or adequate temperature to store a corpse to prevent decomposition,” the complaint says.
The frame was not on a medical bed or table and lay in a bag on a pallet on the floor of the cooler, according to the complaint.
The lawsuit claims the poor garage meant the frame might not be presentable for a wake and open casket funeral, depriving the family of the funeral they wanted.
The lawsuit accuses Celebrity Cruises of acting “recklessly, deliberately and gratuitously, and disregarding Jones’ circle of relatives who enjoyed one” by failing to ensure the morgue worked and that the remains were stored conscientiously.
Celebrity Cruises did not respond to Insider’s request for comment.