{"id":269643,"date":"2016-11-18T12:34:04","date_gmt":"2016-11-18T12:34:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=269643"},"modified":"2016-11-18T12:34:04","modified_gmt":"2016-11-18T12:34:04","slug":"judge-awards-36m-damages-in-bobbi-kristinas-death-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=269643","title":{"rendered":"Judge awards $36m damages in Bobbi Kristina&#8217;s death case"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The partner of Bobbi Kristina Brown has been ordered by a US judge to pay $36m (\u00a329m) in a wrongful death case, her estate&#8217;s lawyers have said.<\/p>\n<p>The daughter of pop star Whitney Houston, Brown was found unresponsive in a bath in her Atlanta home in 2015.<\/p>\n<p>Her family accused her partner Nick Gordon of plying her with a &#8220;toxic mixture&#8221; before putting her face down in the water.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Gordon has not been criminally charged in connection with her death.<\/p>\n<p>But he was found liable in September following a default judgment in a civil case because he failed to appear in court.<\/p>\n<p>He did not appear at the civil hearing, nor did he appoint a lawyer, but his legal representatives have previously described the allegations as baseless.<br \/>\nBrown was in a coma for six months before dying in a hospice aged 22 in July 2015 as a result of immersion in water and drug intoxication, according to medical records.<\/p>\n<p>A post-mortem report was unable to determine whether death was due to intentional or accidental causes.<br \/>\nShe died in similar circumstances to her mother &#8211; one of the world&#8217;s best-selling music artists &#8211; who also died in a bathtub in 2012 with heart disease and cocaine use listed as contributing factors.<\/p>\n<p>Her estate had been seeking at least $40m from Gordon in its wrongful death lawsuit against him, which was filed in October 2015.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Gordon was accused of assault, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and transferring money from Brown&#8217;s account into his own without authorisation.<\/p>\n<p>In a statement after Thursday&#8217;s court order one of the lawyers acting for her family said that &#8220;Bobbi suffered such horrific pain and degradation at the hands of Nick Gordon&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;[He was] the man she loved and trusted. No one should suffer the way she did and the judge sent a strong message in the award of punitive damages that this despicable behaviour is inexcusable and will not be tolerated,&#8221; Glenda Hatchett was quoted by Atlanta Alive as saying.<\/p>\n<p>Brown&#8217;s father, the R&amp;B singer Bobby Brown, contended his daughter had a major career ahead of her in the entertainment industry before her untimely death.<\/p>\n<p>He said in a statement after Thursday&#8217;s ruling that he was pleased with the judgment and called on prosecutors to file criminal charges.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I do know Mr Gordon will be unable to slander my daughter&#8217;s name in the future or obtain any benefits from the use of Krissy&#8217;s name,&#8221; NBC News quoted him as saying.<\/p>\n<p>Brown was the only daughter of Houston and Bobby Brown.<\/p>\n<p>Houston took in Gordon at age 12. He lived with the family for years before he and Bobbi Kristina Brown began a romantic relationship.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The partner of Bobbi Kristina Brown has been ordered by a US judge to pay $36m (\u00a329m) in a wrongful death case, her estate&#8217;s lawyers have said. The daughter of pop star Whitney Houston, Brown was found unresponsive in a bath in her Atlanta home in 2015. Her family accused her partner Nick Gordon of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[137],"tags":[13721,623],"class_list":["post-269643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-showbiz","tag-bobbi-kristina","tag-citi-showbiz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=269643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269643\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=269643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=269643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=269643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}