A settlement has been reached in the wrongful death lawsuit between Aaron Carter‘s family and a Los Angeles psychiatry clinic that prescribed the singer Xanax.
Amen Clinics will pay a “confidential sum” as a “full and final resolution” of the allegations against both the clinic and one of its psychiatrists, Dr. John Faber, according to court documents filed on May 12 and obtained by Billboard. The settlement’s value is “within the ballpark” of the damages Carter’s family sought, which was less than $325,000, per the filing.
In the filing, attorneys maintained that the clinic followed all standards of care and that the artist’s death was caused not by Xanax, but by his inhalation of difluoroethane from canisters.
The complaint had been filed on behalf of Carter’s toddler son and sole heir, Princeton Lyric Carter, over the singer’s drug-linked drowning in November 2022. The case faced a wave of legal challenges before a Los Angeles County judge ruled last year that Princeton had a right to a jury trial over claims that two doctors and two pharmacies “overprescribed” and supplied the late pop star with “excessively high and unreasonably frequent amounts” of Xanax before his death.
The other defendants in the lawsuit — dentist Jason Mirabile, Walgreens, and Santa Monica Medical Plaza Pharmacy — have not settled and are scheduled to go to trial in October.
A lawyer for Mirabile declined to comment. Attorneys for Amen Clinics, the Carter family, Walgreens, and Santa Monica Medical Plaza Pharmacy did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone‘s request for comment.
Carter released his self-titled solo album in 1997 at nine years old and opened for his brother Nick’s Backstreet Boys, making him an overnight global sensation. His sophomore album, the platinum-selling 2000’s Aaron’s Party (Come Get It), featured his biggest hits “I Want Candy” and the LP’s title track.
He would roll out two more Top 20 albums — 2001’s Oh Aaron and 2002’s Another Earthquake — before the era of the boy band faded; he released his final album, Love, in 2018.
