Table Of Content
- Celebrity Cruises Accused Of Improperly Storing Passenger’s Dead Body In Ship’s Cooler, Lawsuit Says
- Nikola Jokic’s brother reportedly involved in an altercation after the Nuggets beat the Lakers
- Celebrity Cruises Accused in Lawsuit of Improperly Storing Body in Ship's Cooler, Not Morgue
- Woman dies after plunging overboard on Florida-bound cruise ship
- Celebrity Cruises improperly stored dead body in cruise ship’s cooler, instead of morgue, lawsuit claims
- Celebrity Cruises kept a passenger's dead body in a drinks cooler for 6 days and let it rot, lawsuit alleges
“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. “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. The Adventure of the Seas passengers' close contacts were vaccinated and tested negative.
Celebrity Cruises Accused Of Improperly Storing Passenger’s Dead Body In Ship’s Cooler, Lawsuit Says
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.
Nikola Jokic’s brother reportedly involved in an altercation after the Nuggets beat the Lakers
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.
Celebrity Cruises Accused in Lawsuit of Improperly Storing Body in Ship's Cooler, Not Morgue
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.
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. When the ship arrived in Florida, a funeral home employee and a Broward County sheriff's deputy found the morgue apparently out of service. According to the lawsuit, when funeral service employees entered the ship to retrieve Jones’ body, it was not found in the ship’s morgue.
Celebrity Cruises improperly stored dead body in cruise ship’s cooler, instead of morgue, lawsuit claims
But 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 U.S. The other option was to keep the body in the morgue, which is what Jones chose. Cruise ships are legally required to have morgues because deaths onboard are so common. In a complaint filed in Florida federal court on Wednesday, the family of the Robert Jones, who was 78, accuses the cruise line of improperly storing his body after death, resulting in its decomposition. 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. Marilyn Jones and her family are asking for compensatory damages in the amount of $1 million and are demanding a trial by jury.
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.
A Widow Said Her Husband Was Left in a Drinks Cooler After Dying on a Cruise - The New York Times
A Widow Said Her Husband Was Left in a Drinks Cooler After Dying on a Cruise.
Posted: Sat, 22 Apr 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
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 from CBS News
Florida cruise company stores dead man's body in cooler, suit alleges - USA TODAY
Florida cruise company stores dead man's body in cooler, suit alleges.
Posted: Sat, 22 Apr 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
I can’t imagine the pain and devastation of losing your husband while isolated on a ship and then learning your loved one was rotting in a cooler while you thought they were being properly cared for while you continued on your journey. The family is asking for $1 million in compensatory damages and they should get every red cent. The lawsuit also explains the extent to which Jones’ body decayed after being stored in the ship’s cooler, as reported via NBC News. In August 2022, Robert L. Jones and his wife, Marilyn Jones, boarded Celebrity Equinox, a cruise ship owned by Celebrity Cruises. However, according to CNN, a happy event soon turned tragic when Mr. Jones died due to a cardiac event. According to the complaint, Robert L. Jones, died due to a cardiac event while on the Celebrity Equinox cruise ship in August 2022, traveling from Fort Lauderdale to ports in the Eastern Caribbean.
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.
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.
So, they have a morgue on board, but some how the body was stuffed into a drinks cooler by someone at some time. That cooler was already fulfilling its purpose while a perfectly good morgue sat empty! As we saw with the BuzzFeed News report on sexual assaults at sea, staff aboard these cruises are often not exactly trained in things like collecting evidence or (apparently) body storage. Most cruise ships have morgues onboard because passenger deaths can happen during a voyage, and vessels are required to carry body bags. 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.
