On July 15, a Santa Monica judge approved a $3 million settlement in a lawsuit brought by former OnlyFans model Emily Willis’s mother and legal guardian against Malibu Lighthouse Treatment, the company that owns Summit Malibu, an exclusive Southern California rehab center where Willis was found unresponsive in February 2024. After legal fees, Willis will receive approximately $1.26 million, though technically there isn’t anything she can do with it. That’s because Willis cannot move or communicate beyond occasionally opening her eyes and sometimes grunting. 

The Willis of today is very different than who she was just a few years ago. In the early 2020s, she was among the most prominent adult performers in the world. In 2021, she won the AVN female performer of the year award (the adult industry’s version of the Academy Awards), as well as the top XBIZ award two years in a row. She’d only been in the industry since 2018, yet found her way to the top in less than three years. 

But she wanted more. By 2023, she was at Sundance as part of the cast of a Steven Soderbergh-produced film alongside Scott Bakula, Stephen Dorff, and Bella Thorne. She was preparing to make the jump from the adult industry to regular Hollywood, following the footsteps of Sasha Grey. 

And that meant leaving the adult industry behind. Following her awards run, her agency imploded, and she was left self-producing content for OnlyFans. She’d become one of the platform’s top earners during the pandemic boom, but the pressure of keeping content going for her account while trying to pursue non-adult ventures was hard. Willis attempted to launch a clothing line (with her own funding), but it didn’t take off. She kept trying to pursue mainstream opportunities but felt she couldn’t leave OnlyFans just yet. 

But there was another reason she couldn’t leave. According to her family’s complaint, Willis had a ketamine addiction, which was why she checked into Summit Malibu on January 27, 2024. She paid $45,500 cash for 21 days of care. On intake, she was documented as five-foot-six and 100 pounds, making her 16 pounds underweight according to the facility’s own nutritional screening. But the family alleges that despite the notes about her health, the facility never referred her to a nutritionist or physician. 

Over the next nine days, Willis began to deteriorate. Only one day in, she refused medications and began showing withdrawal symptoms. By January 30, facility notes described her as “disheveled, frail, disoriented” with “poor” insight and “difficulty walking,” classified as “extremely” medically impaired. Staff noted that she should be transferred to urgent care, but Willis declined. On February 3, paramedics were called when she had difficulty breathing, but she declined care. 

And the following day at 12:10 pm, she was found unresponsive with no pulse. The clinician assigned to monitor her left for lunch at 11:40 am and didn’t return until 12:30, even though someone signed his initials on the 15-minute observation logs. 

The responding paramedics worked on her for nearly an hour before restoring a pulse, but the oxygen deprivation left her with irreversible brain damage. 

The facility denied wrongdoing, arguing in court filings that Willis repeatedly refused medical advice and that the staff lacked legal authority to force outside treatment. The family’s attorney acknowledged the case “was no slam dunk” and that nobody knows exactly what happened or if the facility could’ve prevented her injuries. The agreed-upon settlement doesn’t establish if the facility could have done anything differently, but it will help Willis’s family care for her. But in today’s economy, $1.26 million won’t go far for 24/7 care.