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 couple, of Bonifay, Fla., have been simply two days into the journey when Robert Jones, 79, died of a coronary heart assault.
Celebrity Cruises offered Ms. Jones with two choices, based on a federal lawsuit that she filed towards the cruise line this week: disembark together with her husband’s physique in San Juan, P.R., or comply with have it saved within the ship’s morgue till it returned to Florida six days later.
She opted to stay with the ship. But when a funeral house employee and a Broward County sheriff’s deputy got here aboard in Fort Lauderdale to retrieve Mr. Jones’s physique, they found that it had been moved from the morgue to a cooler on a special ground, based on the lawsuit, which was filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
Having been saved at an inadequate temperature, the physique had “horrifically decomposed,” the lawsuit mentioned, stopping his household from having an open casket at his wake and funeral.
For her trauma, Ms. Jones, who had been married to her husband for 55 years, and her household are in search of a jury trial and a minimum of $1 million in damages.
In an announcement, Celebrity Cruises declined to remark, citing “the sensitivity of the alleged facts and out of respect for the family.”
The lawsuit, which was reported by Miami New Times, mentioned members of the ship’s crew advised Ms. Jones that there was a “50/50 shot” if she acquired off the ship in San Juan that the coroner’s workplace there would take possession of her husband’s physique for an post-mortem earlier than releasing it to a funeral house. She was advised she must keep in Puerto Rico together with his physique and make preparations on her personal to get it, and herself, again to Florida.
Assured that the Equinox was geared up to securely transport her husband’s physique again to Fort Lauderdale, Ms. Jones, who was 78 on the time and instantly touring alone, gave the crew permission to retailer his physique within the ship’s morgue and agreed to stay on board for the remainder of the cruise, the lawsuit says.
“She was given a very difficult choice,” Thomas Carey, a lawyer representing Ms. Jones, her two daughters and three grandchildren, who’re additionally plaintiffs within the lawsuit, mentioned in an interview on Friday. “She logically selected the ship’s morgue,” he mentioned, after she was assured it had a working facility.
“At some unknown point,” he mentioned, “somebody discovered that the refrigeration was not working.”
When the funeral house employee and the sheriff’s deputy discovered that Mr. Jones’s physique was not within the morgue however had been moved to a beverage cooler, the lawsuit mentioned, it was “immediately clear” that it was within the superior phases of decomposition, the lawsuit mentioned. The physique, it mentioned, had expanded with fuel and “his skin had turned green.”
The cooler was meant for issues like soda, Mr. Carey mentioned, and was not practically chilly sufficient to retailer a human physique.
Like all cruise ships, the Celebrity Equinox, which is registered in Malta and may carry as much as 2,852 folks, is required to have a morgue as a result of onboard deaths aren’t unusual, mentioned Hendrik Keijer, a marine operations professional who served for 10 years as a captain on Holland America Line cruise ships.
“For some people it is their last vacation, unfortunately” Mr. Keijer mentioned. “That’s why morgues are onboard.”
Jacob Munch, a maritime lawyer who can be representing Ms. Jones in her lawsuit, mentioned cruise traces have an obligation to take care of the morgues.
“It’s incumbent on them to make sure they’re working properly,” he mentioned in an interview, “especially in sensitive situations like this. She’s turning to them for advice.”
If Ms. Jones had recognized the ship didn’t have a working morgue, the lawsuit mentioned, she would have chosen to take her husband’s physique off the ship in Puerto Rico. Celebrity Cruises’ dealing with of the matter had been “reckless and careless,” it mentioned.
Ms. Jones and her household are “devastated” and can battle to heal, Mr. Carey mentioned.
“For the rest of her life,” he mentioned, “she’s going to have to think about this.”
Source: www.nytimes.com