No criminal charges will be filed in Prince’s fentanyl overdose, which resulted in the star’s 2016 death. On Thursday, authorities announced that there was no evidence linking a specific person or persons to his fatal dose of the powerful drug. Even so, Michael Schulenberg, the Minnesota doctor who treated Prince in the weeks leading up to his death, has settled a $30,000 civil suit for an illegal prescription.
According to reports, Schulenberg had written Prince a prescription for Percocet under the name of his bodyguard, Kirk Johnson, in an effort to protect the musician’s privacy. It is, of course, illegal to write a prescription for one person knowing it is intended for another. A Boston injury lawyer can help you recover damages if a physician’s negligence caused you harm.
However, Schulenberg maintains his innocence, saying that he never prescribed drugs for someone else with the knowledge that they would be used by Prince. In a recent statement, the physician’s attorney said that he ”is not a target in any criminal inquiry and there have been no allegations made by the government that Dr. Schulenberg had any role in Prince’s death.”
Prince’s Famously Private Life Hindered the Investigation
Although Prince had purportedly been living a sober life for some time, he became addicted to painkillers following a hip injury. At the time of his death, dozens of painkillers were found at his home, most of them Vicodin counterfeits. As fentanyl is commonly used in counterfeit pills on the black market, it is very possible that Prince unknowingly consumed the dangerous drug. Even so, the prosecution believes that, due to Prince’s extremely private life, it is more likely than not that others assisted him in his efforts to obtain illegal pills.
The famously discreet musician didn’t own a cellphone, which further complicated the investigation into his death. According to investigators, the people present at his home on the morning of his death “provided inconsistent and, at times, contradictory statements.” A MA injury lawyer can help you determine how to proceed if you’ve been injured by another’s negligence.
Less than a week before his death, on the return trip from his last concert, Prince’s plane made an emergency stop in Moline, Illinois where he was taken to the hospital for an opioid overdose. However, no further drug tests were performed, and he was released that same day. Following the incident on the plane, Dr. Schulenberg prescribed the singer with a drug used in the treatment of withdrawal from opiates.
Where is Prince’s Doctor Now?
In addition to paying $30,000 to settle the civil lawsuit, Dr. Schulenberg must undergo two years of “heightened compliance requirements for logging and reporting his prescriptions of controlled substances to the D.E.A.” Following Prince’s death, the doctor changed jobs. He is still working as a doctor in good standing in a different Minneapolis suburb.
Between 2015 and 2016, fentanyl-related deaths more than doubled. In fact, Minnesota saw a surge of black market fentanyl around the same time as Prince’s death. Shortly after, two more musicians, Tom Petty and Lil Peep both died from accidental overdoses involving the drug. Most of these overdoses occur due to illegal fentanyl pressed into pill form in dealers’ basements. Users often think they are buying oxycodone, but these fentanyl-laced pills can be up to 100 times stronger.
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