It’s not surprising that people die on cruise ships. After all, each ship has thousands of people onboard, and cruises are also popular with elderly people, so every once in a while people will pass away.
Ships have morgues for this very reason, and there are supposed to be protocols in place for handling deaths. Those protocols aren’t always followed, though, and Celebrity Cruises is now facing a lawsuit over how it handled a recent death.
Man died of heart attack on Celebrity Cruises ship
A widow named Marilyn Jones is suing Celebrity Cruises after her husband died of a heart attack on the 3,000-passenger Celebrity Equinox ship on August 15, 2022. The lawsuit isn’t about the death as such, but rather about how his body was handled after he died. This was a week-long roundtrip cruise from Fort Lauderdale, and the death happened one day into the journey.
According to the lawsuit, the 78-year-old widow was given two options by crew members when her husband passed away on the ship — her husband’s body could be taken off at the next port (in Puerto Rico), or it could stay onboard until the cruise concluded.
The widow decided to keep his body onboard, after being warned that she’d also have to get off the ship if her husband’s body was removed, and would have to figure out transportation to the mainland. Furthermore, she was informed that island authorities may have to perform an autopsy if the body were taken off there, which could also delay her return.
Gosh, I feel terrible for her situation. Not only was she grieving the loss of her husband of 55 years, but she was dealing with challenging logistics, especially as she was traveling alone at this point. I can appreciate not wanting to offload the body in Puerto Rico, where it would have probably been much more complicated, but the next six days of the cruise must have been rough.
Unfortunately what made matters much worse is what was discovered after the cruise.
Body was stored in drink cooler, not morgue
The widow is now suing Celebrity Cruises for $1 million. Why? Jones claims she was told that the body would be stored in a morgue until the ship got back to Fort Lauderdale, but unfortunately that’s not what happened.
When the ship returned to Florida, a funeral home employee and a Broward County deputy learned that the morgue on the ship was allegedly out of service, so instead the body was stored in a bag, inside a walk-in drink cooler, on a pallet.
The cooler was allegedly significantly warmer than the near-freezing temperatures needed to store the body, so remains were in “advanced stages of decomposition,” with the body being bloated and green.
According to the lawsuit, this caused the family “extreme trauma by visualizing Mr. Jones’ body horrifically decomposed, and knowing their husband and father was callously and casually left in a beverage cooler, stripping him of his dignity.” Furthermore, this meant the family was unable to have an open-coffin funeral, “which was a long standing family custom and was what his family had desired.”
Bottom line
Celebrity Cruises is being sued for $1 million over the handling of a body, after a passenger passed away. According to the lawsuit, the ship’s morgue was broken, so instead the body was stored in a drink cooler that wasn’t cold enough, leading to further decomposition. The widow wasn’t informed of this, and is furious. I don’t blame her — this is really shocking handling of a very tough situation, and the company should be held accountable, in my opinion.
Something tells me that this might settle outside of court…
What do you make of this situation?
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