An incident has left this woman and her family traumatized and heartbroken after her husband who passed away on a cruise ship was manhandled. His body was stored in a drink cooler, decomposing to the point that the family members were left traumatized by the visuals and tortured by the thought of how his dignity was stripped off him without his family's knowledge or consent.
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Celebrity Cruises is being sued for mishandling a body of a deceased passenger by allowing it to decompose in a drink cooler aboard the ship last year.
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Reportedly, Robert Jones, 78, died of a heart attack in August 2022 aboard the Celebrity Equinox as it sailed the Caribbean, and the cruise line gave his widow, Marilyn Jones, who was accompanying him, a choice, according to the suit.
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They gave her the option of picking up the body at the ship's next port stop in Puerto Rico or allowing the body to be stored in the ship's morgue until the cruise ship returned to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, six days later.
The widow says she was "encouraged" to keep her husband's remains on the ship until they returned to Fort Lauderdale, according to the lawsuit.
Following this, she decided to let her husband's body be stored in the ship's morgue.
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However, when the Broward County deputy sheriff and a local funeral home went to collect the body on August 21 ahead of Mr. Jones' funeral the body was found with an intubation tube still left in his throat.
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His body had also decomposed inside a body bag in the drink cooler that was not at an “appropriate” temperature, according to the complaint.
If Mr. Jones' body was placed in the ship's morgue it could have gone months without decomposing, his family claim.
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As a result, the family suffered "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 suit said.
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It further claims that the walk-in cooler was comparatively warmer than the near-freezing temperatures required to store a body and prevent decomposition.
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Robert Jones’ remains were found to be in the "advanced stages of decomposition," having turned bloated and green.
The family's lawsuit claims that because of the body's decomposing situation, they could not even hold an open-coffin funeral for Robert, which was "a long-standing family custom and what his family had desired."
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Marilyn Jones, her two daughters, and three grandchildren are seeking $1 million in damages from Celebrity Cruises.
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They filed their lawsuit against the cruise line in a federal district court in Fort Lauderdale.
Mr Jones' family said they were unable to get closure due to not being able to have an open casket funeral which is a family tradition for them.
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The Celebrity Equinox cruises the Caribbean year-round and is based out of Fort Lauderdale. The Malta-flagged vessel can carry nearly 3,000 passengers and 1,200 crew members.
Celebrity Cruises, which is a subsidiary of Royal Caribbean Group, told FOX Business in a statement that
"Due to the sensitivity of the alleged facts and out of respect for the family, we decline to comment on the matter."