Table Of Content
- WATCH: Man Lights Himself On Fire Outside Of Courthouse Where Donald Trump’s Trial Is Taking Place
- Woman dies after plunging overboard on Florida-bound cruise ship
- What are the rules for unvaccinated passengers?
- Cruise line let passenger’s body badly decompose in drink cooler after heart attack: lawsuit
- Migrants shipped to Martha's Vineyard by Gov. Ron DeSantis given crime victim visas
- Celebrity Cruises if facing a lawsuit from the widow of a man who died while on board.

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.
WATCH: Man Lights Himself On Fire Outside Of Courthouse Where Donald Trump’s Trial Is Taking Place
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.
Cruise passenger’s body decayed after crew stored it in drink cooler, family’s suit says - Miami Herald
Cruise passenger’s body decayed after crew stored it in drink cooler, family’s suit says.
Posted: Mon, 24 Apr 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
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 cl - CBS News
Celebrity Cruises improperly stored dead body in cruise ship's cooler, instead of morgue, lawsuit cl.
Posted: Sun, 23 Apr 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
While not every passenger on board has had their COVID vaccines – two adults and 24 kids, about 1% of the total passenger count, are unvaccinated – Royal Caribbean Cruises Chairman and CEO Richard Fain said Friday that he’s confident that the cruise line is ready to get back to business. Lauderdale was unable to salvage his remains enough to be suitable for an open casket wake and funeral, which was a long-standing family custom and was what his family had desired,” reads the lawsuit. 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. Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. It also alleged that Jones was told Puerto Rican authorities might insist on an autopsy, delaying the return of the body.
What are the rules for unvaccinated passengers?
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.
Cruise line let passenger’s body badly decompose in drink cooler after heart attack: lawsuit
Celebrity’s actions caused the family “extreme trauma by visualizing Mr. Jones’s body horrifically decomposed, and knowing their husband and father was callously and casually left in a beverage cooler, stripping him of his dignity,” the suit reads. A cruise line stored the body of a passenger who died onboard in a drinks cooler for several days, causing the man’s body to turn green and decompose, the man’s widow alleged in a federal lawsuit filed in Florida last week. Celebrity's actions caused the family "extreme trauma by visualizing Mr. Jones's body horrifically decomposed, and knowing their husband and father was callously and casually left in a beverage cooler, stripping him of his dignity," the suit reads.
Celebrity Cruises Accused in Lawsuit of Improperly Storing Body in Ship's Cooler, Not Morgue
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.
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.

According to CNN, the woman is accusing the company of improperly storing her husband’s dead body in the ship’s cooler after he died on board. Although requirements vary, modern cruise ships are required to have a working morgue onboard, according to a 2018 report by Thrillist. 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. When the ship arrived in Florida, a funeral home employee and a Broward County sheriff’s deputy found the morgue apparently out of service. They found the body in a walk-in drink cooler in a bag on a palette, according to the suit.
Celebrity Cruises if facing a lawsuit from the widow of a man who died while on board.

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.
“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,” according to the lawsuit. However, "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 alleges, according to CNN. "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," the complaint said. But when the vessel returned to Fort Lauderdale on 21 August, a sheriff’s office deputy and funeral home employee found that Robert Jones’s body had been placed in a bag on a pallet on the floor of a drinks cooler, according to the lawsuit. The room was not cold enough to prevent the body from decomposing, and funeral staff were reportedly not able to salvage the body enough for an open casket funeral.
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.
Jones died of a cardiac medical emergency while on the Celebrity Equinox cruise ship in August 2022, which was traveling from Fort Lauderdale ports in the Eastern Caribbean. 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. 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.
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.
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