Prince heirs sue Walgreens and Illinois hospital over musician’s death

  • Six heirs to the Prince estate are suing Walgreens and an Illinois hospital over the musician's death.
  • Prince died in April 2016, following an overdose of the opioid Fentanyl.
  • Six days earlier the musician had been revived by paramedics after collapsing on a private jet.
Musician Prince is seen on stage at the 36th NAACP Image Awards at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on March 19, 2005 in Los Angeles, California.
Kevin Winter | Getty Images
Musician Prince is seen on stage at the 36th NAACP Image Awards at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on March 19, 2005 in Los Angeles, California.

Relatives of the musician Prince are suing both the pharmacy chain Walgreens and an Illinois hospital.

A wrongful-death lawsuit filed in Cook County, Illinois, reportedly alleges that Trinity Medical Center failed to appropriately treat and investigate an initial overdose on April 15, 2016 that the singer survived.

Prince was revived by paramedics by his jet on the tarmac in Moline, Illinois, following an emergency landing. Six days later, following another overdose, Prince died at the age of 57 at his Paisley Park estate in Minnesota.

The lawsuit claims that following the first incident, Prince was not given proper counseling by Trinity Medical Center and that a doctor and pharmacist did not properly investigate the overdose.

Six heirs to Prince's estate also used the lawsuit to accuse two pharmacists at Walgreens of giving the wrong prescription medicine to the singer.

Last week, a Minnesota prosecutor attributed Prince's death on April 21, 2016 to his use of a counterfeit painkiller, laced with the powerful opiate fentanyl.

The source of the pills has never been discovered and the prosecutor said he could not bring any criminal charges in connection with the rock star's death.

The U.S. is in the grip of a synthetic opioid addiction crisis. The center for Disease Control and Prevention has claimed that in 2016 there were more than 42,000 opioid overdose deaths in the United States.

CNBC contacted Walgreens and Trinity Medical Center for comment but had not received a reply from either at the time of publication.