Brittany Murphy's father sued the coroner for her hair samples, then said a lab found heavy metals; her mother called it a smear

Brittany Murphy collapsed at the Hollywood Hills house she shared with her husband, Simon Monjack, and her mother, Sharon Murphy, and died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on 20 December 2009, aged 32. Her death certificate listed her father as "unknown." On 25 February 2010 the Los Angeles County coroner ruled the death accidental, caused by pneumonia, with anemia and multiple drug intoxication as factors. Monjack died in the same house on 23 May 2010, of acute pneumonia and anemia. In April 2011, after repeated appeals, county officials added her father, Angelo Bertolotti, to the death certificate. On 19 December 2011 Sharon Murphy sued the lawyers who had represented her in a settlement with the house's builders, alleging they had not told her that settling waived her right to sue for wrongful death; she settled that suit on 7 February 2013. On 11 January 2012 Bertolotti, acting as his own lawyer, sued the coroner and the Los Angeles Police Department in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging neither had tested her hair for "poisons, toxins or heavy metals." A judge dismissed the suit on 24 July 2012 after he failed to appear in court a second time. After a second unsuccessful suit, the coroner agreed in 2013 to send hair and tissue samples to a laboratory of his choice once he proved he was her father. On 18 November 2013 he released a private laboratory report finding "high levels of heavy metals" and said she and Monjack had been poisoned. Sharon Murphy called the claim "a smear." In April 2016 the coroner's office said it had no immediate plans to reopen the inquiry.