Slipknot bassist's family gets settlement in overdose lawsuit against doctor, hospital

The survivors of Slipknot bass player Paul Gray have obtained a settlement from health care providers whom they blamed for his drug-overdose death.

Gray, 38, died in May 2010 at an Urbandale hotel, where he overdosed on an array of drugs, including fentanyl and morphine. The rock star’s family blamed the death on Dr. Daniel Baldi, a pain-relief specialist who had treated Gray for years, including for drug addiction.

Baldi denied he was at fault. His lawyer noted the physician didn’t prescribe the drugs that caused Gray’s death.

The Gray family sued Baldi and his former employers, including the hospital company now known as UnityPoint-Des Moines. The lawsuit was scheduled to go to trial in Polk County District Court Monday, but it was settled over the weekend, said Baldi’s lawyer, Connie Diekema.

Diekema declined to say which of the parties agreed to pay to settle the case, or how much money was involved. She said the Gray case was the last of several lawsuits filed in the matter.

The situation drew national attention in 2012, when Polk County prosecutors charged Baldi with 10 criminal counts of involuntary manslaughter. The unusual charges alleged the doctor caused the deaths, including Gray’s, by recklessly prescribing large amounts of addictive pills to patients who showed clear signs of drug abuse. The charges could have drawn a prison sentence, but a jury acquitted Baldi in 2014.

State regulators reinstated Baldi's license to practice medicine in 2016, and he is working as an anesthesiologist in the Des Moines area. Diekema, his lawyer, expressed relief Monday that the legal matters are all resolved. “Dan Baldi did not deserve what he went through. I’m glad it’s behind us,” she said.

Brenna Gray’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment Monday. A UnityPoint spokesperson declined comment.

At one point, the Gray family’s lawsuit was almost derailed, because lawyers for the defendants successfully argued that Gray’s widow, Brenna Gray, waited too long to file it. But the Iowa Supreme Court ruled in 2016 that the family could press the case on behalf of the Grays’ daughter, October Gray, who was not yet born when her father died.

Brenna Gray testified during Baldi’s 2014 criminal trial that the doctor continued to prescribe the sedative Xanax to her husband despite knowing about his history of abusing the pills.

"I just knew it was his drug of choice, that he'd struggled with it. So I just wasn't really sure why he was on it, why he needed it along with the medication he was taking for addiction," she testified.

But Baldi’s lawyer, Guy Cook, noted that the doctor had been tapering down Paul Gray’s Xanax prescriptions, and that Gray died of an overdose of other drugs, including narcotics he apparently bought on the black market.

"You understand, do you not, ma'am, that if Paul got the morphine and the fentanyl on the street somewhere, that it's nobody's fault except Mr. Gray or the person he got it from?" Cook asked Brenna Gray.

"I don't know where he got them," she replied, tearfully. "… It's a hypothetical question. It's not fair."

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