Cruise line let passenger’s body decompose, lawsuit says

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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — A widow and her household are suing Superstar Cruises for allegedly mishandling her husband’s physique after he died whereas they have been on a ship final 12 months, saying it was left to decompose they usually suffered excessive emotional trauma.

After Marilyn Jones’ husband of 55 years, Robert Jones, died of a coronary heart assault Aug. 15 onboard the Superstar Equinox, his physique was saved for practically every week inside a walk-in cooler usually used for drinks as a substitute of a correctly chilled morgue as she was promised, in line with the federal lawsuit filed in Florida.

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That left the physique bloated and inexperienced, and the household was unable to have an open-coffin funeral “which was an extended standing household customized and was what his household had desired,” the lawsuit says. Marilyn Jones, her two daughters and three grandchildren are in search of $1 million in damages.

Superstar Cruises declined to remark, citing the case’s sensitivity and “out of respect for the household.” The Superstar Equinox, which cruises the Caribbean year-round out of Fort Lauderdale, is flagged out of Malta and might carry nearly 3,000 passengers and 1,200 crew members.

In response to the lawsuit, which was filed Wednesday in Fort Lauderdale, after Robert Jones died, his widow was given two decisions by crew members.

They allegedly advised Marilyn Jones, then 78 and from the Florida Panhandle, that his physique may very well be taken off on the subsequent cease, Puerto Rico, or saved within the morgue till the ship obtained again to Fort Lauderdale in six days. As a result of passenger deaths generally occur, most giant cruise ships have a morgue.

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The crew advised her that if she selected Puerto Rico, she would wish to go together with the physique after which prepare transportation for it and herself again to Florida, the go well with says. She was additionally advised that island authorities would maybe require an post-mortem, which may additional delay their return.

As a result of Jones was alone, she picked the morgue. However that’s not the place the physique was saved, the lawsuit says.

When the ship arrived in Florida, a funeral dwelling worker and a Broward County sheriff’s deputy discovered the morgue apparently out of service. They discovered the physique in a walk-in drink cooler in a bag on a palette, in line with the go well with.

It says the cooler was considerably hotter than the near-freezing temperatures wanted to correctly retailer a physique, and Robert Jones’ stays have been in “superior phases of decomposition.”

Superstar’s actions prompted the household “excessive trauma by visualizing Mr. Jones’s physique horrifically decomposed, and understanding their husband and father was callously and casually left in a beverage cooler, stripping him of his dignity,” the go well with reads.

Jones’ attorneys are in search of a jury trial.