Cruise line let passenger’s body badly decompose in drink cooler after heart attack: lawsuit

A late Florida man’s heartbroken family has filed a $1 million lawsuit against Celebrity Cruises, claiming his body was improperly stored in a cooler — instead of the ship’s morgue — causing it to badly decompose.

When Marilyn Jones’ husband of 55 years Robert Lewis Jones died of a heart attack aboard a Celebrity Equinox ship sailing through the Caribbean in Aug. 2022, she was promised by cruise staff that his body would be kept safe in the ship’s morgue, according to the lawsuit.

To her horror, after the ship docked in Fort Lauderdale six days later, she learned her 78-year-old husband’s body had allegedly been kept inside a walk-in cooler, typically used to keep beverages cold. 

“When the funeral services employee in Ft. Lauderdale was brought onto the ship to retrieve Mr. Jones’ body, his body was not located in the ship’s morgue,” said the lawsuit, filed last week in Florida federal court.

“Instead, Mr. Jones’ body had, at some time not yet known, had been moved from the ship’s morgue to a cooler on a different floor than the ship’s morgue. The cooler in which Mr. Jones’ body was found by the funeral employee had drinks placed outside of the cooler, and was not at a temperature which was sufficient nor proper for storing a dead body to prevent decomposition.”

Funeral service workers from Fort Lauderdale found the body inside a blood-splattered bag on a palette on the floor of the cooler. After, it became “immediately clear” that the body was in “advanced stages of decomposition and was never stored in a temperature appropriate to stop decomposition from occurring.” 

As a result, his body became bloated and green, preventing his loved ones from having an open-coffin funeral, “which was a long-standing family custom and was what his family had desired,” the lawsuit claims.

According to the filing from Wednesday, the bereaved widow was given two options by crew members after her husband had died during the cruise.

Marilyn was told that the body could be taken off when the ship was docked at their next stop in Puerto Rico, or be placed in the ship’s morgue until it returned to Ft. Lauderdale six days later, according to the suit.

She decided to have the body stored in the ship’s morgue as she allegedly would have had to pay for transportation from Puerto Rico to Florida.

When the ship arrived back in Ft. Lauderdale, a funeral home employee and a deputy from the Broward County Sheriff’s Office were brought on board to retrieve the body only to discover it wasn’t where it was supposed to be.

The family claims that if Celebrity had informed Jones of the out-of-service morgue, she could have chosen to get off in Puerto Rico with the body and potentially still have an open-coffin service.

The filing said Marilyn Jones, her two daughters, and three grandchildren are seeking a trial by jury.

“The reckless and careless actions and omissions of Celebrity directly and proximately caused Plaintiffs’ injuries, because if Plaintiff’s knew that there was not a working morgue on the ship, they would have had Mr. Jones’ body taken off the ship,” the lawsuit claims.

“If the defendant’s crew had either kept the morgue in proper working order, or inspected Mr. Jones’ body in the morgue with reasonable frequency, his body would not have decomposed to the point that a funeral director was unable to salvage his remains such that he could receive the open casket funeral and wake services.”

Most cruise ships have morgues onboard because passenger deaths can happen during a voyage, and vessels are required to carry body bags. 

“Morgues are located on ships’ lowest decks, generally along what the crew refers to as “I-95″ — the long corridor that runs from one end of the vessel to the other,” according to the travel blog The Points Guy.

According to the lawsuit, there have been at least 37 deaths aboard Celebrity Cruise’s ships since 2001.

That number is just a sample of total cruise ship deaths reported yearly. A 2020 study in the International Journal of Travel Medicine and Global Health found that between 2000 and 2019, there were 623 deaths reported on cruise ships.

The Equinox made its maiden voyage in 2009 and travels year-round between the Caribbean, the Bahamas, and its homeport of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

Celebrity Cruises could not immediately be reached for comment by The Post Sunday morning.