Arsenio Hall Drops Sinead O’Connor Lawsuit Over Prince Drug Comments
Arsenio Hall dropped a $5 million defamation lawsuit against Sinead O’Connor after the singer apologized for accusing the comedian of providing Prince with drugs, ABC News reports.
O’Connor made her comments on Facebook last May, just weeks after Prince’s death. At the time, evidence suggested that the musician died of a drug overdose, though an official autopsy did not confirm this until June. During the investigation, however, O’Connor wrote on Facebook, “Two words for the DEA investigating where Prince got his drugs over the decades … Arsenio Hall (aka Prince’s and Eddie Murphy’s bitch). Anyone imagining Prince was not a long time hard drug user is living in cloud cuckoo land. Arsenio I’ve reported you to the Carver County Sheriff’s office. Expect their call. They are aware you spiked me years ago at Eddie Murphy’s house. You best get tidying your man cave.”
In her apology statement, O’Connor said, “I apologize for my Facebook posts about Arsenio Hall to the extent that anyone thought I was accusing him of acting as Prince’s drug dealer and supplying him with illegal hard drugs, or insinuating that Arsenio had something to do with Prince’s death. I sincerely apologize because those statements would be false, and I retract them unequivocally.”
Hall’s publicist added, “Arsenio’s lawyers have confirmed that now that Arsenio’s reputation has been restored by Sinead’s unequivocal retraction and apology, the lawsuit will be dismissed.”
A rep for O’Connor declined to comment further on the situation when reached by Rolling Stone.
Hall filed the lawsuit last May, denying O’Connor’s “malicious statements” and “heinous accusations” as “despicable, fabricated lies.” The suit also referred to O’Connor as a “desperate attention seeker” who is “now known perhaps as much for her bizarre, unhinged internet rants as she is for her music.”
O’Connor then responded to the suit on Facebook, telling Hall, “suck my dick” and “I’m more amused than I’ve ever dreamed a person could be and look forward very much to how hilarious it will be watching him trying to prove me wrong.”
Since an autopsy confirmed that Prince died of an opioid overdose, investigators have been examining whether doctors illegally prescribed the pop star Fentanyl, or whether it came from a black market source. Last October, a judge ordered that search warrants and other documents pertaining to the investigation remain sealed until April 17th.