RE: tecs23 Apr 2023 22:49
A widow is suing Celebrity Cruises for allegedly storing her husbandâs body in a drinks cooler after he died at sea.
Robert Jones, 79, suffered a fatal heart attack last August during an eight-day Caribbean cruise on the Celebrity Equinox.
According to the lawsuit, filed by Marilyn Jones, his wife of 55 years, crew members gave her the choice of storing the body in the shipâs mortuary until it reached Fort Lauderdale, Florida, or disembarking the corpse in Puerto Rico.
Mrs Jones was told she would be responsible for paying transport costs if she took the latter option.
The body remained on the ship for another six days, but it was not in the shipâs morgue when undertakers boarded the cruise line to retrieve it.
âInstead, Mr Jonesâ body had, at some time not yet known, been moved from the shipâs morgue to a cooler on a different floor than the shipâs morgue,â the lawsuit read.
âThe cooler in which Mr Jonesâ body was found by the funeral employee had drinks placed outside of the cooler and was not at a temperature which was sufficient nor proper for storing a dead body to prevent decomposition.â
Badly decomposed
The body, which had been stored in a bag and left on a palette, was badly decomposed.
Bloated and green, it was unsuitable for an open-coffin funeral, which was the family tradition.
According to the lawsuit, the temperature in the cooler was significantly warmer than just above the freezing level which would have prevented decomposition.
Celebrity Cruises caused the family âextreme trauma by visualising Mr Jonesâs body horrifically decomposed, and knowing their husband and father was callously and casually left in a beverage cooler, stripping him of his dignityâ, it is alleged.
Mrs Jones and her family, who are seeking $1 million (ÂŁ804,000) allege the cruise employees ârecklessly, negligently without care, wilfully, and wantonlyâ failed to care for the body properly.
They have accused the company of stripping Mr Jones of his dignity.
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