Woman sues Celebrity Equinox cruise after husband’s dead body is stored in drinks cooler

Prepare to be shocked by this unbelievable story! A widow is suing a cruise line for storing her husband’s body in a beverage cooler for several days, causing it to turn green and decompose. The lawsuit, filed in Florida last week, claims that the body was discovered “in advanced stages of decomposition” and “in a bag on a palette on the floor of the cooler.” Can you imagine the horror and trauma this caused the family?

The deceased, Robert Jones, passed away on August 15^th last year after having a heart attack on the Celebrity Equinox cruise ship while traveling to the Caribbean. His widow, Marilyn Jones, was given the option to transport the body to San Juan, Puerto Rico, for burial or keep it in the functioning onboard morgue until they arrived back in Florida. She chose the latter, but little did she know what was in store for her.

When the ship arrived back in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on August 21^st, a sheriff’s office deputy and funeral home employee discovered Robert Jones’s body had been placed in a bag on a pallet on the floor of a beverage cooler. The chamber was not cold enough to stop the body from rotting, and funeral directors were unable to save enough of the body for an open casket funeral. To make matters worse, the ship’s essential operating morgue was not even operational at the time.

Marilyn Jones is now suing Celebrity Cruises for $1 million in damages, along with her daughters and three grandkids supporting her. Celebrity Cruises declined to comment, citing “the sensitivity of the alleged facts and out of respect for the family.”

“The actions and omissions of Celebrity and its crew have tortiously interfered with the body of Robert Jones and with plaintiffs’ last memories of Jones, which has caused 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 in the sacred time just after his passing,” the suit states.

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