FILE – In this Aug. 16, 2012, file photo, Bobbi Kristina Brown attends the Los Angeles premiere of “Sparkle” at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles. A medical examiner said Brown’s face being immersed in water, along with drug intoxication, led to her death last year. The Fulton County Medical Examiner’s office in Atlanta released a statement Friday, March 4, 2016, on the death as it prepares to release the full autopsy report. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File) ATLANTA – A judge in Atlanta on Thursday ordered Bobbi Kristina Brown’s partner, Nick Gordon, to pay $36 million in a wrongful death case, her estate’s lawyers said.
Brown, the daughter of singers Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown, was found face-down and unresponsive in a bathtub in her suburban Atlanta townhome in January 2015. Gordon, who also lived there, and a friend were listed on the police report as being in the home when investigators arrived there.
The wrongful death suit said other people were there when Brown was initially found unresponsive. She was in a coma for six months before dying in hospice care at age 22 on July 26, 2015. Her death was similar to the way her mother died and drew worldwide headlines and the frenzied attention of the tabloids.
Whitney Houston’s body was found face-down in a foot of water in her bathtub at the Beverly Hilton Hotel just before the 2012 Grammy Awards. Authorities found prescription drugs in the suite and evidence of heart disease and cocaine in Houston’s body and determined her death was an accidental drowning.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge T. Jackson Bedford ruled in September that Gordon repeatedly failed to meet court deadlines in the civil suit. His order said that means the conservator of her estate wins by default.