$36M in damages awarded in Brown death

ATLANTA — A judge in Atlanta ordered Bobbi Kristina Brown’s partner, Nick Gordon, to pay $36 million US 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.

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 on Thursday said that means the conservator of her estate wins by default.

The family of 22-year-old Brown accused Gordon in the lawsuit of giving her a “toxic cocktail” before putting her face-down in the water.

Gordon, an orphan three years older whom Houston had raised as her own, has not been charged with a crime. Brown had referred to Gordon as her husband.

Gordon wasn’t in court Thursday and did not have a lawyer in the civil case. But his criminal defence lawyers, Joe Habachy and Jose Baez, said in August 2015 that the allegations were baseless.

The medical examiner couldn’t determine if Brown killed herself, if someone else killed her or if her death was accidental.