APPALLING

Cruise Line Sued for Allegedly Storing Passenger’s Rotting Corpse in Drinks Cooler for Six Days

A funeral-home employee allegedly found the body in a bag on the floor, too decomposed to be displayed for an open-casket funeral.

A major cruise line is facing a lawsuit that accuses it of grossly mishandling the body of a passenger who died on board, according to Insider. The family of Robert Jones, who died of a heart attack while on a cruise, is seeking $1 million in damages after Celebrity Cruises allegedly stored his dead body in a drinks cooler for six days while it decomposed. All the while, cruise employees allegedly concealed the fact the cruise ship did not have a functioning morgue onboard—despite the fact that it is legally required to—and convinced the 78-year-old’s widow not to take the body off the ship in San Juan, Puerto Rico, to be processed. The company’s neglect was revealed when a funeral-home employee found the body in a bag on the cooler floor, in a state too decomposed to be displayed for an open-casket funeral, the lawsuit alleges.