MIAMI - Following a key ruling from a federal judge against it, Celebrity Cruises has settled a lawsuit filed after the morgue on one of its ships malfunctioned and kept a family from having an open-casket funeral.
Judge Kathleen Williams ruled July 8 to deny the motion for summary judgment of Celebrity Cruises, whose staff had to move the body of Robert Jones in August 2022 from the morgue of the Celebrity Equinox to an ice-carving freezer. With a trial on the horizon, the parties announced three days later they had reached a confidential settlement.
Jones suffered a cardiac after the ship set sail from Fort Lauderdale and traveled the Caribbean Sea. He was traveling with his wife Marilyn, their children and their grandchildren.
The family alleged a history of open-casket funerals was ruined by what happened to his corpse while the ship made its way back to Florida. That included a malfunctioning sensor in the morgue and a move to a different freezer known as the beverage cooler that left the body with a swollen face and bulging eyes, plus skin slipping.
Judge Williams refused to grant judgment for Celebrity Cruises, finding it could not point to any documentation regarding when staff noticed the morgue freezer was warmer than it should have been.
"As pointed out by Plaintiffs, the logbook, which Defendant or its employees ordinarily use to record the morgue's temperature, is inexplicably missing and unavailable to prove the morgue's temperature on the days Mr. Jones' body was in the cooler," Williams wrote.
"In light of this, and the testimonial and expert evidence presented by both Plaintiffs and Defendant, summary judgment on the factual disputes related to the morgue's temperature and the timing regarding Defendant's realization of the morgue's malfunction would be improper."
Celebrity's Wendy Hilt tried to coordinate with the Jones family to get Robert's body back to the their preferred Fort Lauderdale funeral home, rather than transporting him to a funeral home in Puerto Rico. Marilyn got off the boat in St. Thomas and flew back to Florida.
Hilt said the morgue cooler could store the body for the remaining six days of the cruise. Medical personnel on-board wrapped his body in a sheet and placed it in the ship's morgue, which regularly was kept a temperature between two and four degrees Celsius.
The day before the cruise was over, the Equinox was in the Bahamas. Officials boarded and asked to see the body, and though the thermostat had represented the morgue was an appropriate temperature, it was not.
A nurse smelled gastric fluid, and another noticed a strong odor from the morgue. That nurse found Mr. Jones' body was warm and soft; the culprit was a malfunctioning evaporator sensor.
Jones' body was moved to the beverage cooler on a different deck of the ship via stretcher, but Celebrity staff never relayed this information to any member of Jones' family.
When personnel from the Fort Lauderdale funeral home went to retrieve the body, they said it was in a non-viewable condition, eliminating the possibility of an open-casket funeral.
The ensuing lawsuit alleged one count of tortious interference with a body. Plaintiffs said staff should have discovered the morgue was too warm earlier, while Celebrity argued the act of moving Jones' body to the beverage cooler was not extreme or outrageous.
"(T)he Court disagrees with Defendants' position that it did not commit any other willful act besides moving Mr. Jones' body from the morgue cooler to the ice-carving freezer," Williams wrote.
"Defendant committed a willful act when it decided not to inform Plaintiffs about the malfunctioning morgue and the need to relocate Mr. Jones' body."