Jim Carrey is hit with new wrongful-death lawsuit over the suicide of his late girlfriend
Jim Carrey (“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” “The Truman Show”) has found himself the subject of a second wrongful-death lawsuit, this time filed by the mother of late girlfriend Cathriona White.
The complaint, filed Tuesday morning on behalf of Brigid Sweetman, alleges that White contracted three sexually transmitted diseases from Carrey without warning and that her daughter’s suicide was a result of her diagnosis and the illegally-obtained prescription medication she received from the actor.
“Jim Carrey should be ashamed of what he did to my daughter,” Sweetman said in a statement. “And he should be ashamed for how he has used his Hollywood attorneys to badmouth Cat’s husband, Mark, with the hope that nobody will hold him responsible for what he did.”
Mark Burton, White’s estranged husband, brought a similar wrongful-death lawsuit against Carrey last month.
White, a 28-year old Irish makeup artist, was found by two concerned friends in September 2015, with pill bottles bearing the name “Arthur King” near her body.
According to the coroner’s report, White died by suicide, induced by ingesting a lethal amount of prescription drugs, including Ambien, Propranolol and Percocet, none of which White had a prescription for.
“The lies from Jim Carrey and his handlers need to stop,” Michael Avenatti, attorney for both Sweetman and Burton, said in a statement. “Instead of attacking a grieving family in an effort to avoid responsibility, why don’t they just try telling the truth about how Carrey gave Cat the STDs and then gave her the illegal drugs? Unlike Hollywood handlers, lab results do not lie.”
Carrey alleges that the prescriptions that White consumed were stolen from him.
In response to Burton’s lawsuit in September, Carrey released a statement calling the suit “a terrible shame.”
“It would be easy for me to get in a back room with this man’s lawyer and make this go away,” Carrey said. “But there are some moments in life when you have to stand up and defend your honor against the evil in this world.”
In response to Sweetman’s lawsuit filed this week, Carrey’s attorney, Martin D. Singer, released the following statement:
“It is understandable that a mother who has lost a daughter will look for someone to blame.
“But in directing her grief and rage at Jim Carrey and joining this ridiculous lawyer’s attempt to capitalize on Cathriona’s suicide, Mrs. Sweetman is heading down the same dark path as Cathriona’s green card ‘husband,’ Mark Burton.
“On her 30th birthday, just a few days before her suicide, Cathriona White was distraught having received a message from her mother through Facebook that was so destructive and demoralizing that she instantly deleted her Facebook account so her mother could no longer contact her.
“Cathriona often lamented about her contentious relationship with her mother, how she was forced to leave home at the age of 15, and how they had been estranged for years.”
At the time of her death, White left a suicide note that read, in part: “Please forgive me. I’m just not for this world.”
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