Billionaire Sumner Redstone either can’t talk or he’s able to clearly communicate how he wants to run his $40 billion media empire. It depends on whom you ask.
The 93-year-old’s mental capabilities were at the center of a hearing Thursday in Canton, Massachusetts. Viacom Inc. Chief Executive Philippe Dauman claims the company’s controlling shareholder is incapacitated and being manipulated by his daughter, Shari Redstone. Redstone’s lawyers say the case should be dismissed or moved to California, where the media mogul has lived for more than a dozen years.
Probate Judge George Phelan didn’t immediately rule on Redstone’s request or on Dauman’s challenge to his removal from a trust that controls Viacom. The judge didn’t say when he would hand down a decision in a case that Dauman wants fast-tracked.
“Obviously, I have a lot to digest,” the judge said after more than six hours of arguments.
Redstone’s lawyers assured Phelan the billionaire can communicate even as his health declines. His attorney, Robert Kleiger, told the judge he meets with the mogul three or four times a week and will brief him Friday on the status of the case.
“Mr. Redstone is very interested in this process,” the lawyer said.
Power Play
Lawyers for the two men ousted as trustees sought to persuade Phelan that Shari Redstone saw an opportunity when her father’s condition worsened and launched a power play aimed at taking control of the owner of Paramount Pictures and the CBS television network.
“She schemes,” said Les Fagen, an attorney for Dauman and fellow trustee George Abrams. “She isolates him. She shuts out his old colleagues, including my client Philippe Dauman, who worked for Mr. Redstone for 30 years.”
Dauman and Abrams are engaging in “character assassination” by painting the billionaire’s daughter as a power-hungry harridan, countered Elizabeth Burnett, a lawyer for Shari Redstone. “I know Shari and descriptions of her as puppet master are not true.”