While there’s still no word from the L.A. County Coroner’s office regarding the results of the toxicology reports performed on Brittany Murphy in the wake of her untimely death last month, her husband, Simon Monjack, is still in the midst of a press blitz that he’s hoping will help him to rebuild his sullied reputation. He sat down for an exclusive interview with Matt Lauer on the Today show last week, and now this week, he did another exclusive interview* with Gerald Posner of the Daily Beast. In it, he boasts that he was a multimillionaire art dealer who recognized the talent of Damien Hirst long before anyone else did, he was once named Britain’s “Smartest Child,†the couple shared a “very huge†home, and he bought so many Chanel outfits for his late wife that she was never even able to wear them all before her death. And oh yes, he also casually mentions his plans to bring a lawsuit against Warner Bros. for wrongful death!
As you’ll recall from Monjack’s Today interview, the sometime screenwriter tried to guilt trip Matt Damon and Brad Pitt into bowing out of Happy Feet II, the movie that his wife was fired from just weeks before her death. It is his belief, and Brittany’s mother Sharon’s, that the stress from being dismissed from the project that was set to pay her some $50,000 resulted in her having a heart attack. “Warner Brothers relied on conjecture and hearsay about the Puerto Rico film for why they canceled Brittany’s role in Happy Feet,†he told Posner. “They killed her.â€
While we certainly empathize with Monjack and Sharon Murphy and cannot even begin to imagine what they have gone through over the last month and change, we’re not exactly sure that there is solid grounding for a wrongful death suit here. Perhaps there is evidence to suggest that she was wrongfully dismissed from the project and that there should be some remuneration, but wrongful death? Then again, what do we know? We learned most everything we know about the law from Douglas Wambaugh and Arnie Becker.
*Someone really needs to come up with some rules about what sorts of news constitutes as “exclusive,†don’tcha think?
Brittany Death Suit [Daily Beast]