Arsenio Hall’s suit against Sinead O’Connor had been active for eight months before being called off.(Wikimedia Commons/Man Alive!)
Arsenio Hall has dropped his lawsuit against singer Sinead O’Connor after she apologized for claiming he gave the late Prince drugs.
The Irish performer, known for her Prince-penned hit “Nothing Compares 2 U,” released a joint statement with Hall: “Arsenio Hall and Sinead O’Connor announce that Sinead has retracted and apologized for statements she made about Arsenio last year, which prompted his defamation lawsuit against her, and the lawsuit has been resolved.”
In a May 2016 Facebook post, O’Connor enamed Hall as the source of Prince’s drug use. The 57-year-old superstar died in April 2016 of an opioid overdose.
“Two words for the DEA investigating where Prince got his drugs over the decades —Arsenio Hall,” she wrote in a post that would later be deleted. “Arsenio, I’ve reported you to the Carver County Sheriff’s office. Expect their call.”
O’Connor’s comments led Hall to file a $5 million libel suit against her days later, where he called her statements “despicable, fabricated lies.”
The musician, who opened up about her mental health issues last year, released a public apology through Hall’s publicist retracting her disparaging statements.
“I apologize for my Facebook posts about Arsenio Hall to the extent that anyone thought I was accusing him of acting as Prince’s drug dealer and supplying him with illegal hard drugs,” O’Connor said. “Or insinuating that Arsenio had something to do with Prince’s death. I sincerely apologize because those statements would be false, and I retract them unequivocally.”
O’Connor’s apology means that Hall’s legal team felt the suit did not need to move forward.
“Arsenio’s lawyers have confirmed that now that Arsenio’s reputation has been restored by Sinead’s unequivocal retraction and apology, the lawsuit will be dismissed,” the comedian’s publicist added in the statement.
