The estate of Aaron Carter has settled wrongful death claims against Walgreens and another pharmacy that filled the singer’s Xanax prescriptions before his 2022 drowning.
Attorneys for Carter’s family announced in a Thursday (Oct. 15) court filing, obtained and first reported by Billboard, that they’ve “reached a settlement resolving all claims” against both Walgreens and Santa Monica Medical Plaza Pharmacy. The estate still has claims remaining against a dentist that prescribed Xanax to the 2000s pop star.
Related
Deal terms were not made public. The Carter estate’s attorney, Marc Lazo, told Billboard on Wednesday (Oct. 21) that they’re “satisfied” with the settlement. “We’re pleased that the pharmaceutical parties have accepted a resolution,” added Lazo. “It took some time to get there, but we did it.”
Reps for Walgreens and Santa Monica Medical did not return requests for comment.
Carter drowned in a bathtub at the age of 34 with drugs in his system. In 2023, his former fiancée brought a wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of their four-year-old son alleging a psychiatrist and dentist were to blame for overprescribing Xanax to Carter, and that pharmacies wrongly filled the prescriptions without checking to see if he was abusing the drug.
The defendants all maintained that Carter’s death was caused not by Xanax, but by the gas he inhaled from canisters of compressed air (known as difluoroethane). In court filings, they argued that the amount of Xanax in Carter’s system at the time of death was not enough to make him lose consciousness.
The psychiatry clinic was the first to settle with Carter’s family this past May. The pharmacies have now followed suit, though dentist Jason Mirabile is still fighting the claims. Mirabile is currently scheduled to go to trial against the Carter estate in January.
Mirabile’s attorneys have indicated in pre-trial filings that they plan to argue Carter was an absentee father to his son, and that therefore, the child cannot win damages for lost financial support or companionship. Mirabile’s team wants to call witnesses from the Department of Children and Family Services, who allegedly got involved in a custody dispute between Carter and his former fiancée before he died.
Lazo, the Carter family’s attorney, told Billboard on Wednesday, “We do remain disappointed about the dentist. It seems like he’s spending his time trying to defame Aaron Carter and trying to contrive stories about Aaron not having been a good father, et cetera, rather than accept liability for his own conduct.”
“Trial is now set for early January,” added Lazo. “We’ll see if that goes, or if the dentist comes to his senses.”
Mirabile’s attorneys declined to comment on Wednesday.
Carter got his start opening for the Backstreet Boys, of which his older brother Nick Carter is a member, in the late 1990s. He later became a teen heartthrob in his own right, and his 2000 album Aaron’s Party (Come and Get It) peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard 200. His next two albums, 2001’s Oh Aaron and 2002’s Another Earthquake, both had top 20 debuts on the chart.
Later in life, Carter was open about struggling with substance abuse. The singer did multiple stints in rehab, and he had been attending outpatient therapy in the months leading up to his death.
