Update (September 20, 2:30 P.M.): Michael Avenatti, Mark Burton’s lawyer, spoke with VF.com about the wrongful death lawsuit on a phone call today. “They continue to conveniently ignore the fact that these drugs were in a false name, which absolutely defies a federal law,” Avenatti said. “There is no ‘celebrity exception’ to federal and state law relating to controlled substances. I don’t care how famous you are; you are not entitled to falsify a name in connection with obtaining highly controlled substances.”
VF.com has reached out to Carrey for a response to Avenatti’s comments.
The original post continues below.
Last week, Mark Burton, the husband of Jim Carrey’s late girlfriend, Cathriona White, filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against Carrey. In it, Burton, who, according to E! News, was separated from White at the time of her death, claims that Carrey provided prescription drugs to White. He says she “was prone to depression”; she committed suicide using the painkillers last September. Burton’s suit states, according to USA Today, this result was “predictable and foreseeable.” Carrey responded to the suit in a statement Carrey’s attorney provided to VF.com.
“What a terrible shame,” he said. “It would be easy for me to get in a back room with this man's lawyer and make this go away, but there are some moments in life when you have to stand up and defend your honor against the evil in this world.”
Michael Avenatti, a lawyer for Burton, told The Washington Post that White and Burton had been married since the beginning of 2013. He would not go into further details about their relationship, as it “distracted from what this case is about.”
In his own statement, Carrey claims that White’s troubles “were born long before [he] met her.”
In the suit, Burton asserts that Carrey had been obtaining the drugs under the “bogus name” of Arthur King and giving them to White.
“I will not tolerate this heartless attempt to exploit me or the woman I loved,” he said. “Cat’s troubles were born long before I met her and sadly her tragic end was beyond anyone’s control. I really hope that some day soon people will stop trying to profit from this and let her rest in peace.”
Burton is requesting an undisclosed sum of money and a jury trial in the civil suit, according to the lawsuit.
At the time of her death, nearly one year ago, Carrey released a statement to Today, expressing his sadness over her death:
"She was a truly kind and delicate Irish flower, too sensitive for this soil, to whom loving and being loved was all that sparkled."
