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Last week, the family of Robert Jones, a 78-year-old man who died aboard a celebrity cruise in August 2022, filed a lawsuit accusing the cruise line of improperly storing his body after death in a cooler instead of a morgue for six days, resulting in rapid decomposition.
In a civil lawsuit against Celebrity Cruises, Robert Jones’ family, who are suing the cruise line for $1 million, claimed that the accused company left his body to rot in a walk-in-cooler despite promising his wife that he would be well preserved in a morgue aboard the ship.
The lawsuit filed in Florida by Jones’ wife, daughters, and grandchildren further accused the cruise line, who are legally required to have morgues aboard their ships, of failing to disclose that the facility was out of order to the victim’s family.
Robert Jones' family accuse crew of concealing vital information in Celebrity Cruises dead body lawsuit
As per the Lawsuit, Robert Jones died of a heart attack on board the Celebrity Equinox in August 2022 while sailing through the Caribbean. Following his sudden demise aboard the ship, the cruise personnel contacted Jones' wife, Marilyn Jones, who was allegedly given two options for what to do with her late husband's remains.
The cruise personnel allegedly told Marilyn Jones she could either have his body removed when the ship was docked at their next stop in Puerto Rico or leave it aboard in the ship’s morgue until it returned to Ft. Lauderdale six days later.
The lawsuit claimed that they discouraged her from opting for option one, citing bureaucratic red tape issues and instead promised that her husband’s remains would be safe in the morgue until they reached their final destination in Florida.
However, when the celebrity cruise docked in Fort Lauderdale, funeral service workers found the body inside a blood-splattered bag on the floor of the cooler that wasn't cold enough to refrigerate the body. The lawsuit read:
“When the funeral services employees in Ft. Lauderdale were brought onto the ship to retrieve Mr Jones’ body, his body was not located in the ship’s morgue.”
They added:
“Instead, Mr Jones’ body had, at some time not yet known, had been moved from the ship’s morgue to a cooler on a different floor than the ship’s morgue. The cooler in which Mr. Jones’ 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.”
The lawsuit additionally claimed that the extreme decomposition prevented loved ones from having an open-coffin funeral for Jones, which is a long-standing tradition observed in the family.
Authorities reportedly found that the morgue aboard the celebrity cruise was not functional. The family is seeking a trial by a jury against the cruise line.
