A woman is suing Celebrity Cruises for allegedly mishandling her husband’s dead body.
The New York Timesreports Marilyn Jones, 78, and her two daughters and three grandchildren have filed a lawsuit against the cruise line, alleging the cruise ship kept Jones’ husband’s body in a drinks cooler on the ship after he died last year. Jones’ husband Robert Jones, 79, passed away Aug. 15 of a heart attack while onboard the Celebrity Equinox.
Jones claims that crew members gave her two options regarding her husband’s dead body: they could drop it off at the next stop, in Puerto Rico, or store it in the ship’s morgue until they docked in Fort Lauderdale, Florida six days later.
“She was given a very difficult choice,” Jones’ lawyer Thomas Carey told the New York Times. “She logically selected the ship’s morgue. At some unknown point, somebody discovered that the refrigeration was not working.”
Once the ship returned to Florida, a Broward County sheriff’s deputy and funeral home owner discovered that the cruise ship’s morgue wasn’t operating. Instead, they found Jones’ husband’s body decomposing in a drinks cooler onboard.
The lawsuit alleges that the mishandling of Jones’ body has given the family “extreme trauma,” as they’ve been forced to visualize Robert’s body “horrifically decomposed,” which they claim stripped “him of his dignity.”
“By allowing Mr. Jones’ body to decompose while on the ship to such a state that his family was unable to have open casket funeral and wake services, denying his wife of 55 years, children, grandchildren, friends, and community the closure their family and community deserved, a practice which was a part of his family’s culture,” the suit stated.
