Cruise line let passenger’s body decompose, lawsuit says
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla –
A widow and her household are suing Celebrity Cruises for allegedly mishandling her husband’s physique after he died whereas they have been on a ship final 12 months, saying it was left to decompose they usually suffered excessive emotional trauma.
After Marilyn Jones’ husband of 55 years, Robert Jones, died of a coronary heart assault Aug. 15 onboard the Celebrity Equinox, his physique was saved for almost every week inside a walk-in cooler usually used for drinks as an alternative of a correctly chilled morgue as she was promised, in keeping with the federal lawsuit filed in Florida.
That left the physique bloated and inexperienced, and the household was unable to have an open-coffin funeral “which was a long standing family custom and was what his family had desired,” the lawsuit says. Marilyn Jones, her two daughters and three grandchildren are looking for $1 million in damages.
Celebrity Cruises declined to remark, citing the case’s sensitivity and “out of respect for the family.” The Celebrity Equinox, which cruises the Caribbean year-round out of Fort Lauderdale, is flagged out of Malta and might carry virtually 3,000 passengers and 1,200 crew members.
According to the lawsuit, which was filed Wednesday in Fort Lauderdale, after Robert Jones died, his widow was given two selections by crew members.
They allegedly instructed Marilyn Jones, then 78 and from the Florida Panhandle, that his physique may very well be taken off on the subsequent cease, Puerto Rico, or saved within the morgue till the ship obtained again to Fort Lauderdale in six days. Because passenger deaths typically occur, most giant cruise ships have a morgue.
The crew instructed her that if she selected Puerto Rico, she would want to go together with the physique after which organize transportation for it and herself again to Florida, the swimsuit says. She was additionally instructed that island authorities would maybe require an post-mortem, which might additional delay their return.
Because Jones was alone, she picked the morgue. But that is not the place the physique was saved, the lawsuit says.
When the ship arrived in Florida, a funeral residence worker and a Broward County sheriff’s deputy discovered the morgue apparently out of service. They discovered the physique in a walk-in drink cooler in a bag on a palette, in keeping with the swimsuit.
It says the cooler was considerably hotter than the near-freezing temperatures wanted to correctly retailer a physique, and Robert Jones’ stays have been in “advanced stages of decomposition.”
Celebrity’s actions precipitated the household “extreme trauma 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,” the swimsuit reads.
Jones’ attorneys are looking for a jury trial.
