The settlement agreement states that the settlement “should not be construed as an admission of liability or fault on the part of the United States, its agents, servants or employees, and it is specifically denied that they are liable to the plaintiffs.”

Instead, the settlement is a compromise of disputed claims, the document states, done to avoid the expenses and risks of further litigation.

Simcakoski’s death led to the firing of the Tomah VA’s chief of staff, Dr. David Houlihan. Earlier this month, the former head of the medical center, Mario DeSanctis, was allowed to resign, with a $163,000 settlement, after negotiations that followed his firing in 2015.

The Tomah VA came under fire in 2015 after an Inspector General’s report, released after Simcakoski’s death, found that opioid painkillers were being overprescribed by doctors at the medical center, earning it the nickname “Candy Land.”

Simcakoski, who was honorably discharged from the Marines in 2002, had been treated at VA facilities from 2006 to 2014 for a variety of conditions, and was admitted to the Tomah VA’s Acute Psychiatric Unit on Aug. 10, 2014, then transferred to the Short Stay unit.