Celebrity Cruises Faces A Lawsuit After A Florida Family Claims The Company Stored Their Relatives’ Body Inside Of A Walk-In Cooler Instead Of The Ship’s Morgue

A Florida family has filed a lawsuit against Celebrity Cruises for allegedly storing their relative’s lifeless body in a cooler.

In August 2022, Robert Lewis Jones suffered a heart attack and passed away while aboard a Celebrity Equinox ship. According to the lawsuit, the staffers promised Jones’ wife, Marilyn Jones, that his body would be safe in the ship’s morgue. However, when the ship docked in Ft. Lauderdale six days later, Marilyn learned that her husband’s body was kept inside of a cooler, where beverages are normally stored.

“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,” the lawsuit reads. “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.”

Marilyn says that she was given two options after her husband died. The staffers reportedly told Marilyn that his body could be taken off of the ship at the next stop in Puerto Rico or placed inside of the ship’s morgue. She opted to have his body placed inside of the morgue until the cruise returned to Ft. Lauderdale to avoid paying for transportation fees.

Jones’ body was later found by funeral service workers inside of a blood-splattered bag on the floor of the cooler. By this time,  Jones’ body had already reached  “advanced stages of decomposition” and became “green and bloated.”

As of now, Celebrity Cruises have not commented on the lawsuit.