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Robert Jones (L) pictured at his Aug. 26, 2022 celebration of life next to a closed casket, (R) the Celebrity Equinox, pictured after it was built by the shipyard Meyer in Papenburg, Germany in 2009. (AP Photo/Joerg Sarbach)
Grieving family members in Florida have filed a $1 million dollar lawsuit against a cruise line after the remains of their loved one, who died of a heart attack on board the Celebrity Equinox, were allegedly placed in a cooler rather than in the ship’s morgue last summer.
Marilyn Jones alleges that Celebrity Cruises, a “foreign profit corporation with its principal place of business in Miami, Florida,” committed maritime tortious interference with its handling of her husband’s dead body. The lawsuit said that 79-year-old Robert Jones’ remains were “so far gone in the decomposition process” that his wife of 55 years, children and grandchildren were not able to say goodbye at an open-casket funeral.
A celebration of Jones’ life from Aug. 26, 2022, posted on First Baptist Bonifay’s Facebook page showed that the deceased’s casket was closed. Family members also included in the lawsuit as plaintiffs are Robert Jones’ Florida-based daughters Robin Phillips and Teresa West, as well as two minor grandchildren. Allison Phillips, a Texas resident identified as Jones’ granddaughter, is also a party to the lawsuit.
Plaintiffs said that the cruise line was “required to have a working morgue on board the ship for passengers who pass away during the cruise,” but instead Robert Jones’ body was placed in a cooler for days — resulting in advanced and irreversible decomposition of his remains.
The family claimed that the Celebrity crew told them there was a working morgue on the ship and that the family should could consider that course of action, rather than taking the body ashore to San Juan, Puerto Rico with possible mixed results. According to the filing, the family’s worst fears were realized anyway.
“After Robert L. Jones’ passing, his wife was advised by ship’s personnel that she had two options of what could be done with her husband’s body while on the cruise: (1) either have Mr. Jones’ body removed from the ship in San Juan, or (2) have his body stored on the ship until it reached port in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, approximately six days from the date of his passing,” the lawsuit said. “Celebrity employees told Plaintiff Marilyn Jones that if she had her husband’s body taken ashore in San Juan, she would be required to stay in San Juan with his body and would have to make arrangements for transport for herself and her husband’s body back to the mainland United States. Plaintiff Jones was 78 years old at the time and was without any other family members on board the ship.”
“Celebrity employees also told Plaintiff Teresa West that if her father’s body was taken off the ship in San Juan, there was a ’50/50 shot’ that the coroner’s office in San Juan would take possession of her father’s body (instead of a funeral home) and perform an autopsy of his body before releasing him to a funeral home to perform preservation procedures,” the suit continued. “Celebrity crew advised Plaintiff West that if her father’s body was taken into possession by the coroner’s office in San Juan, there was no guarantee as to when his body would be released back to the United States, and that someone would have to remain in San Juan with her father’s body until it was in fact released.”
Upon arriving back in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, six days after Jones’ death, plaintiffs alleged, it became clear that the grandfather’s body was kept in a cooler on the ship rather than a working morgue.
“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. 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 lawsuit said. “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.”
Plaintiffs claimed that it was “immediately clear” Robert Jones “was never stored in a temperature appropriate to stop decomposition from occurring.”
“It was clear that Mr. Jones’ body was stored improperly, because his body had expanded with gas formed from decomposing, his skin had turned green, and, with the intubation tube still remaining in his mouth and down his throat, there was blood splatter on the inside of the body bag Mr. Jones had been placed in which would only have occurred from extreme amounts of gas being released inside the body, causing blood splatter to come out of the intubation tube from advanced decomposition occurring during the six days his body was on the trip back to Ft. Lauderdale from Puerto Rico,” the lawsuit explained, calling Robert Jones decomposition “so far gone […] the funeral home staff in Ft. 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.”
The family accuses the cruise line of extreme indifference and willful recklessness by “allowing [Robert Jones’] body to decompose in the Caribbean heat without care for the remaining days on board the ship.”
“By allowing Mr. Jones’ body to decompose while on the ship to such a state that his family was unable to have open casket funeral and wake services, denying his wife of 55 years, children, grandchildren, friends, and community the closure their family and community deserved, a practice which was a part of his family’s culture,” the civil case said, adding later: “Each of the plaintiffs were also deprived of their ability to see their husband, father, or grandfather peacefully at his funeral and wake, depriving them of the closure of saying last goodbyes to their loved one.”
Jones’ family now seeks a jury trial in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida and demands at least $1 million in compensatory damages. The complaint was filed on April 19.
Law&Crime reached out to Celebrity Cruises for their statement on the case, but we have not yet heard back.
An obituary for Jones said he was “proud to serve his country as a reservist in the Army National Guard, retiring as a major in 1992.”
“A big supporter of education, Bob served on the Board of Trustees for both Chipola College and the University of West Florida for a total of over 20 years. A lifelong Republican, Bob served as Chairman of the Republican Party of Holmes County, as well as represented the state of
Florida as a delegate at the national GOP conventions in 2004, 2008 and 2012,” the obituary said. “In his free time, Bob enjoyed driving and restoring vintage cars.”
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