Robert Jones, 79, suffered a fatal heart attack in August while on an eight-day Caribbean cruise on the Celebrity Equinox. Photo: Jörg Sarbach/AP
A widow sues Celebrity Cruises for allegedly keeping her husband's body in a drinks fridge after he died at sea.
79-year-old Robert Jones suffered a heart attack fatal in August last year for eight days. Celebrity Equinox Cruise in the Caribbean.
According to a lawsuit filed by Marilyn Jones, his 55-year-old wife, the crew gave her a choice: leave the body at the ship's morgue until it reached Fort Lauderdale, Florida, or land the body in Puerto Rico.
Mrs. Jones was told she would be responsible for paying transportation costs if she chose the latter option.
The body remained on the ship for another six days, but was not in the ship's morgue when the undertakers boarded the cruise ship to pick it up.
“Instead, the body of Mr. Jones at some time, still unknown, was transferred from the ship's morgue to a refrigerator on a different floor than the ship's morgue,” the lawsuit says.
«The refrigerator in which the body of Mr. Jones was found by a funeral home worker, the drinks were placed outside the refrigerator, and the temperature was neither sufficient nor suitable for storing the dead body to prevent decomposition.»
Badly decomposed
The body, stored in a sack and left on a pallet, is badly decomposed.
Bloated and green, it was not suitable for an open-casket burial, which was a family tradition.
According to the lawsuit, the refrigerator temperature was significantly warmer than just above freezing, which would have prevented decomposition.Celebrity Cruises caused the family «extreme trauma by visualizing the horribly decomposed body of Mr. Jones, and knowing that their husband and father were callously and carelessly left in a drinks cooler, stripping him of his dignity,” it is alleged.
Mrs Jones and her family, who are seeking $1 million (£804,000), claim the cruise staff «recklessly, negligently, recklessly, willfully and for no reason» did not properly care for the body.
They accused the company of depriving Mr. Jones of his dignity.
According to the International Journal of Travel Medicine and Global Health, there were 623 deaths on cruise ships between 2000 and 2019.
A spokesperson for Celebrity Cruises said: “Due to the sensitivity of the alleged facts and out of respect for families, we are refusing comment on this issue.»
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