Sumner Redstone reviles ex-lover in competency trial

LOS ANGELES — Inside a closed courtroom, Judge David Cowan and a handful of lawyers on Friday morning watched media mogul Sumner Redstone fight to demonstrate his mental competency in a 30-minute video questioning.

When asked what Herzer had done to assist in his health care, he struggled to find words and failed to help an interpreter spell out an answer.

The video came on the first day of the trial, in which Herzer sought to show that Redstone was mentally incompetent and under the undue influence of others when he removed her last October from an advance directive that would have given her authority over his health care.

The trial, in the probate department of the Los Angeles County Superior Court, has attracted widespread attention, both with its plethora of embarrassing details about Redstone’s love life and deteriorating physical condition, and with the questions it raises about his continuing competence to make decisions about his two big media companies, Viacom and CBS.

“She established a broad intelligence-gathering” network inside Sumner Redstone’s home, “featuring a ring of spies,” said O’Donnell, in describing what he said was a yearlong effort by Shari Redstone, then estranged from her father, to get control of his money and media properties.

Describing Herzer’s behavior as “classic emotional abuse,” Klieger sought to focus the case closely on issues related to the advance health care directive from which Redstone removed Herzer late last year, after breaking off his relationship with her.