Celebrity Cruises Accused Of Storing Dead Body In Ship's Cooler

Table Of Content

• Celebrity Cruises kept a passenger's dead body in a drinks cooler for 6 days and let it rot, lawsuit alleges
• More Details Regarding The Lawsuit & Justice For The Jones' Family
• Kanye West jokes about punching man after alleged Bianca Censori sexual assault incident: ‘He had to go to bed’
• WATCH: Man Lights Himself On Fire Outside Of Courthouse Where Donald Trump’s Trial Is Taking Place
• Nikola Jokic’s brother reportedly involved in an altercation after the Nuggets beat the Lakers

The filing said Marilyn Jones, her two daughters, and three grandchildren are seeking a trial by jury. According to the filing from Wednesday, the bereaved widow was given two options by crew members after her husband had died during the cruise. According to Celebrity's website, for cruises departing from ports outside of Florida, all passengers age 16 and older will still be required to be fully vaccinated. While all crew members are vaccinated, Fain said the company won't enforce vaccines among passengers leaving from a Florida port. Eight of the 14 ships within Celebrity Cruises' fleet plan to return to sailing this year, according to a Saturday news release.

Celebrity Cruises kept a passenger's dead body in a drinks cooler for 6 days and let it rot, lawsuit alleges

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The ship is set to depart on a seven night cruise from Fort Lauderdale at 6 p.m. If the facts presented in the lawsuit are accurate, then they acted horrifically and should be held accountable. This isn't even getting into the health/hygiene aspects of storing a DECOMPOSING CORPSE in a walk in fridge, which presumably will be used to store items for human consumption. 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.

More Details Regarding The Lawsuit & Justice For The Jones' Family

They were "immediately quarantined," and only one experienced mild symptoms, according to a statement from Royal Caribbean spokesperson Lyan Sierra Caro. Fain acknowledged that there will be incidents where passengers test positive for COVID, but believes Royal Caribbean has the ability to manage those cases and avoid a greater outbreak aboard the ship. He pointed to the recent incidents with the Celebrity Millennium and Adventure of the Seas, saying "those cases were handled." Celebrity Cruises, a subsidiary Royal Caribbean Group, had received approval by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to sail one of its ships with paying passengers on board late last month.

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An industry pioneer for 35 years, each Celebrity vacation offers experiences you won’t find anywhere else aboard ships which continue to shatter industry expectations with the highly anticipated Celebrity Xcel arriving Fall 2025. According to the outlet, Robert L. Jones, 79, passed away after a “cardiac event” on the Celebrity Equinox cruise ship in August 2022. The complaint said that a funeral-home worker and a sheriff's deputy from Broward County went to collect the corpse and found it improperly stored. The plaintiffs — his wife, daughters, and grandchildren — are seeking $1 million in compensatory damages. According to the lawsuit, there have been at least 37 deaths aboard Celebrity Cruise’s ships since 2001.

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The lawsuit stated that the morgue had stopped working, and the corpse had been placed on a pallet on the floor of a beverage cooler. Since it wasn’t the correct temperature to store a body, Mr. Jones’ remains deteriorated to an advanced state. 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. 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.

Celebrity Cruises if facing a lawsuit from the widow of a man who died while on board.

However, per the complaint, the morgue was out of action, and Jones's body was instead put in a drinks cooler that wasn't cold enough to refrigerate a body. The lawsuit accuses Celebrity of concealing the fact that it didn't have a working morgue on board, and discouraging Jones's wife from taking her husband's body to be processed in Puerto Rico. The ship’s departure is set to come shortly after four passengers on two ships in Royal Caribbean Cruises' lines – the Celebrity Millennium and more recently, the Adventure of the Seas – tested positive for COVID-19.

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. Last August, Marilyn Jones and her husband, Robert, set out from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on an eight-day Caribbean cruise aboard the Celebrity Equinox. 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. Celebrity Cruises declined to comment on the case, citing “the sensitivity of the alleged facts and out of respect for the family”. According to the lawsuit, which was filed Wednesday in Fort Lauderdale, after Robert Jones died, his widow was given two choices by crew members.

The passengers and their travel party disembarked Thursday in Freeport on Grand Bahama Island. While the lower occupancy means the cruise is less profitable, Fain told CNBC that he wanted to slowly rebuild operations. The ship is sailing at just 36% capacity, a level Fain considers a sign of “untapped demand” given the short notice to book. An excerpt from the lawsuit, reported via CNN, reveals more about the body’s storage location. Celebrity Cruises did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

The ship’s required working morgue was not functioning at the time, the lawsuit says. Whether it’s polluting our oceans and air, causing illness outbreaks or even straight up massive fist fights and sexual assaults, cruise ships are pure trash. We can add “storing loved ones improperly in drinks coolers” to the list of reasons to avoid these floating toilets. 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. However, upon returning to Florida on August 21, a funeral home employee discovered that Mr. Jones’ remains were not in the ship’s morgue.

According to the lawsuit, the ship's personnel gave Jones a list of reasons not to take the Puerto Rico option. Marilyn Jones, her daughters, and three grandchildren are suing Celebrity Cruises for $1m in damages.

Celebrity Cruises delivers an elevated premium vacation experience across our fleet of ships traveling to nearly 300 destinations across more than 70 countries spanning all seven continents. Uniquely offering the intimate feel and thoughtful service of small ships, with the variety and excitement of bigger ones—you can explore the world or get away from it for a little while. With every detail elevated beyond expectations, you will never want to vacation any other way.

Celebrity Cruises declined to comment, citing the case's sensitivity and "out of respect for the family." The Celebrity Equinox, which cruises the Caribbean year-round out of Fort Lauderdale, is flagged out of Malta and can carry almost 3,000 passengers and 1,200 crew members. While the CDC had told cruise lines that they would need 95% of passengers and 95% of crew vaccinated in order to skip test sailings, the mandate contradicted a Florida state law banning businesses from requiring proof of vaccination. On Saturday, Celebrity Cruises' Celebrity Edge is set to be the first cruise ship to set sail from an American port with paying passengers in more than 15 months. 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. For her trauma, Ms. Jones, who had been married to her husband for 55 years, and her family are seeking a jury trial and at least $1 million in damages. The lawsuit accuses Celebrity Cruises of acting "recklessly, willfully, and wantonly, and without care for the Jones family's loved one" by failing to ensure that the morgue was working and the remains were stored carefully.

Passengers who are unvaccinated will face additional protocols in order to board the ship, including COVID testing at their own cost. "Those people were isolated. … everybody else carried on with their vacation uninterrupted." And Wednesday evening, two guests under 16 and unvaccinated aboard Adventure of the Seas tested positive for COVID after routine testing.