Aaron Carter Family Reaches Settlement With L.A. Psychiatrist Over Xanax Prescriptions

Amen Clinics will pay a confidential sum to Aaron Carter’s family, closing one part of the wrongful death suit tied to the singer’s 2022 overdose death while a dentist and two pharmacies remain headed to trial.

According to court papers filed Tuesday, May 12, and obtained by Billboard, the Los Angeles psychiatry clinic and one of its doctors, Dr. John Faber, agreed to what the filing calls a “full and final resolution” of the claims against them. The settlement amount is not public, but the document says it falls “within the ballpark” of the damages Carter’s family might have recovered at trial, which were estimated at less than $325,000.

Carter, who was 34, was found drowned in a bathtub with drugs in his system. His former fiancée later brought the suit on behalf of the couple’s four-year-old son, arguing that two doctors had overprescribed Xanax to the former teen-pop star and that two pharmacies had filled those prescriptions without properly checking whether he was misusing the drug.

Amen Clinics and Faber have not admitted liability in the settlement. Their lawyers argued in Tuesday’s filing that the clinic met the standard of care and that Carter’s death was caused not by Xanax but by gas inhaled from canisters of compressed air, known as difluoroethane.

The remaining defendants have taken the same position. Dentist Jason Mirabile, Walgreens and Santa Monica Medical Plaza Pharmacy contend that the amount of Xanax in Carter’s system was not enough to have rendered him unconscious. None of the three has settled, and the case is still scheduled for trial in October.

Mirabile’s attorney declined to comment on Wednesday, May 13. Lawyers for the Carter family, Amen Clinics, Walgreens and Santa Monica Medical Plaza Pharmacy did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Carter’s death brought a sad symmetry to a career that once seemed to track so neatly through the machinery of late-1990s pop stardom. He first opened for the Backstreet Boys, where his older brother Nick Carter was already a member, then became a teen idol himself. His 2000 album Aaron’s Party (Come and Get It) reached No. 4 on the Billboard 200, followed by Oh Aaron in 2001 at No. 7 and Another Earthquake in 2002 at No. 18.

In later years, Carter was unusually public about his struggles with substance abuse. He completed multiple stints in rehab and had been in outpatient therapy in the months before he died.

Aaron Carter performs on stage in a concert sponsored by Hasbro at the South Street Seaport September 6, 2003 in New York City. The singer was later joined by his older brother and Backstreet Boy band member Nick Carter, for the final song. Stuart Ramson/Getty Images