ALBAWABA- A woman is suing Celebrity Cruises for $1 million after her husband's body was reportedly moved from the ship's morgue to a cooler on a different floor where it “horrifically decomposed."
Marilyn Jones and her husband Robert had set out from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on an eight-day Caribbean cruise aboard the Celebrity Equinox. Two days into the trip, Robert Jones, 79, died of a heart attack. Celebrity Cruises presented Ms. Jones with two options, according to the lawsuit: disembark with her husband’s body in San Juan, Puerto Rico, or agree to have it stored in the ship’s morgue until it returned to Florida six days later.
Assured that the Equinox was equipped to safely transport her husband’s body back to Fort Lauderdale, Ms. Jones gave the crew permission to store his body in the ship’s morgue and agreed to remain on board for the rest of the cruise.
However, when a funeral home worker and a Broward County sheriff’s deputy came aboard in Fort Lauderdale to retrieve Mr. Jones’s body, they discovered that it had been moved from the morgue to a cooler on a different floor, according to the lawsuit, which was filed Wednesday in US District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
Having been stored at an insufficient temperature, the body had “horrifically decomposed,” the lawsuit said, preventing his family from having an open casket at his wake and funeral.
The lawsuit said members of the ship’s crew told Ms. Jones that there was a “50/50 shot” if she got off the ship in San Juan that the coroner’s office there would take possession of her husband’s body for an autopsy before releasing it to a funeral home. She was told she would have to stay in Puerto Rico with his body and make arrangements on her own to get it, and herself, back to Florida.
Celebrity Cruises declined to comment on the lawsuit, citing “the sensitivity of the alleged facts and out of respect for the family.
