A cruise company is charged with keeping a deceased passenger’s body in a drinks cooler after the ship’s morgue allegedly malfunctioned.
Last August, while sailing on Celebrity Cruises’ Equinox with his wife Marylin, 78, Robert L. Jones, 79, of Florida, passed away after a heart attack.
Despite having Robert off the ship after only six days, the family claims that the amount of rot in his body forced them to forego their “long-standing custom” of open-casket burials.
They have filed a $1 million lawsuit against the business, alleging management of treating Robert’s remains carelessly and willfully, failing to make sure the morgue was operational, and hiding the fact that it was not.
The ship’s crew also allegedly went to lengths to discourage Marylin from taking her husband’s body off the ship until it returned home to Fort Lauderdale.
A local funeral home worker went to collect the body and found it in a bag on a wooden palette on the walk-in cooler’s floor, according to lawsuit papers filed in Florida claim.
The employee allegedly found ‘drinks placed outside of the cooler’, which was ‘not at a temperature which was sufficient nor proper for storing a dead body to prevent decomposition’.
An intubation tube, sometimes used to try and resuscitate heart attack patients, was still sticking out of the late pensioner’s throat, the papers added.
Some reports claim a deputy sheriff boarded at the same time and also observed the improper storage of Robert’s body.
According to the lawsuit, when Robert died the Equinox’s crew told his wife she could either have his body taken off the ship in Puerto Rico’s capital of San Juan or have him stored until they arrived in Fort Lauderdale in six days’ time.
It claims: ‘Celebrity employees told Plaintiff Marilyn Jones that if she had her husband’s body taken ashore in San Juan, she would be required to stay in San Juan with his body and would have to make arrangements for transport for herself and her husband’s body back to the mainland United States.’
The family was allegedly told officials in San Juan might hold Robert’s body to perform an autopsy and that the ship had a working morgue equipped to handle such situations.
The family argues that if Marylin had been informed the morgue was not working, she could have chosen to get off in Puerto Rico with the body and potentially still have an open-coffin service.
A spokesperson for Caribbean Cruises said the company is ‘unable to comment on the matter out of respect for the family, and due to the fact that there is ongoing litigation’.