Shari Redstone said she and her father have recently grown closer. In his testimony, he said he wanted her to be in charge of his medical care. She said in a statement Monday that new suit is a “baseless attack against the Redstone family” and “total fiction.”
The competency case had raised the possibility that trustees of Redstone’s estate would be put in charge of his CBS and Viacom shares. He owns majority voting rights through National Amusements; if he were to be declared incompetent, control of that company could shift to seven trustees, among them Shari Redstone and Viacom Chief Executive Officer Philippe Dauman. The dismissal may have been a letdown to investors; CBS shares fell 2.9 percent, and Viacom dropped 2.2 percent.
Trial witnesses would have included Dauman, who was named Redstone’s health-care agent in October, and Shari Redstone. She replaced Dauman as her father’s health-care agent this year.
‘Bet Wrong’
“Ms. Herzer bet wrong when she assumed that Mr. Redstone’s difficulty communicating would result in her reinstatement in his life and fortune,” Robert N. Klieger, one of Redstone’s lawyers, said in a statement. He said Redstone will seek to recover money he lavished on Herzer and Holland. “Mr. Redstone is looking forward to liberating the $150 million in ‘gifts.”’
Herzer now has a much tougher road ahead of her, both in her appeal and with her new lawsuit, said Kris Knaplund, a law professor at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. The central question was did Sumner know what he was doing, she said: “The judge seemed to indicate he does.”
Now Herzer will have to prove that not only that Shari Redstone took actions against her, but that Sumner changed his will because of those actions.
“She may be able to show Shari said horrible things that weren’t true,” Knaplund said. “He could say ‘I would have done this no matter what my daughter said.’ Normally such cases are filed after someone died. If he’s alive, you can just go an ask him.”
“Manual Herzer has a problem,” she said.
The case is In re Advance Health Care Directive of Sumner M. Redstone, BP168725, Los Angeles County Superior Court.