Celebrity Cruises Accused in Lawsuit of Improperly Storing Body in Ship's Cooler, Not Morgue

Celebrity Cruises is facing a lawsuit in which a Florida woman and her family accuse the cruise line of improperly storing her husband's body in the ship's cooler, not the morgue.

In the lawsuit, cited by both CNN and NBC News, the widow of Robert L. Jones accuses the company of improperly storing the late Jones, thereby "allowing Mr. Jones' body to decompose while on the ship to such a state that his family was unable to have [an] open casket funeral." The Jones family seeks damages of at least $1 million, according to the suit as cited by the news outlet.

Jones died of a cardiac medical emergency while on the Celebrity Equinox cruise ship in August 2022, which was traveling from Fort Lauderdale ports in the Eastern Caribbean.

According to the lawsuit, as cited by CNN, after Jones' death, his wife, Marilyn, was informed there were two options: have the body removed from the ship in San Juan, Puerto Rico or have the body stored on the ship until it reached port in Ft. Lauderdale in six days.

The decision was made to store the body.

However, "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," the lawsuit alleges, according to CNN. "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 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."

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Celebrity Cruises did not immediately return PEOPLE's request for comment. A representative with Celebrity Cruises on Friday said in an email to NBC News: "Due to the sensitivity of the alleged facts and out of respect for the family, we decline to comment on the matter."