More than half a decade after Lil Peep died of a drug overdose, his mother and former label have settled a multimillion-dollar wrongful death lawsuit.
In a Friday filing, Peep’s mother Liza Womack informed the L.A. Superior Court of the settlement with her son’s label First Access Entertainment, per Pitchfork. Though terms of the settlement are unavailable, a post on the late rapper’s Instagram informed fans that “his music will be in the care of his mother and brother, and no one else.”
“It is a solemn moment for us as we reflect on the struggles of the past five-plus years. We are grateful to all of the fans, friends, professionals, and family who stood by us,” the post read, alongside a photo of Peep with his mother and brother. “We were all permanently changed by Gus’s death. We know he should be here in the world with all of us, creating — making whatever he was inspired to make. But he is not.
They added, “We will protect his music with all of our strength.”
The update comes several weeks after Womack’s attorney Paul Matiasic told the judge overseeing the case that reaching a settlement agreement was “taking a little bit longer than we all anticipated.”
After Friday’s filing, Matiasic told Pitchfork that with the end of the litigation, Womack’s “focus will shift to shepherding his legacy and continuing to release his music for the enjoyment of his fans.”
Lil Peep, whose real name was Gustav Elijah Ahr, died on a tour bus in Arizona on Nov. 15, 2017 after ingesting a deadly cocktail of fentanyl and Xanax, authorities said.
In a disputed declaration in the case, Cold Hart, a member of Lil Peep’s emo-rap collective GothBoiClique, told the court he believed FAE tour manager Belinda Mercer “provided and supplied Xanax, cocaine, marijuana, Percocet, and ketamine” to “those traveling on the tour bus.”
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Teresa Beaudet declined to strike those comments in a key ruling last February, but she rejected other comments in which Cold Hart claimed that on Nov. 14, 2017, Peep’s managers told the rapper he should make “himself sick from taking a bunch of Xanax” so he could trigger “an insurance claim and not lose money” on a show he wanted to cancel.
Regarding the wrongful death claim, the judge had ruled that Womack presented “viable” claims, including that no one on the bus was trained to recognize the signs of an overdose; the bus was not equipped with a defibrillator, Narcan, or any other “life-saving apparatuses” used for drug overdose; and no one on the bus rendered Peep life-saving aid.
“There’s no question there’s a triable issue as to whether (Mercer) provided the drugs or not,” Judge Beaudet said at a hearing last February. “If you’re going to create an environment like that where drugs are flowing, and you’re providing it, and hey, you actually don’t have any life-saving device or any Narcan to help people who are going to have a problem with these drugs, it seems to me you are creating a very dangerous situation there.”
Echoing revelations in a March 2019 Rolling Stone story about Peep’s tortured final days, Womack stated in her filings that Mercer was detained by Canadian officials at a border crossing between Buffalo, New York, and Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada on Oct. 25, 2017, because “illegal drugs” were found in her possession leading up to a show in Toronto just three weeks before Peep’s death.
