The corpse of a cruise passenger who perished of a heart attack on a Celebrity Cruises Equinox ship in the summer of 2022, allegedly rotted because it was placed in a drinks cooler, according to a lawsuit against Celebrity Cruises.

Cruise ships have morgues onboard due to the possibility of passengers dying while on the cruise. The lawsuit alleges that the morgue on the Celebrity Cruise Equinox was inoperable.

An elderly man’s corpse was left to rot for six days in a drinks cooler onboard a cruise ship after he died on board, according to a civil lawsuit against Celebrity Cruises.

In a complaint filed in Florida federal court on Wednesday, the family of the Robert Jones, who was 78, accuses the cruise line of improperly storing his body after death, resulting in its decomposition.

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 body was found by a funeral worker lying in a bag on the cooler floor, the complaint said.

Due to the body allegedly not being properly preserved, the corpse had rotted by the time they reached Florida, thus spurring on the lawsuit.

The entire story is tragic. Losing a spouse during a cruise and then having the corpse reportedly mishandled must have been an incredibly traumatic experience. My thoughts go out to the family, and I hope they can find peace.