At the very core of Shari Redstone’s burning desire to recombine CBS and Viacom—beyond the Les Moonves saga, a Delaware lawsuit, and a slew of boardroom defenestrations—is the question of whether her 95-year-old father, who communicates partly through an iPad programmed to say “fuck you,” knows what the hell she’s actually doing. After all, it was Sumner Redstone who intentionally separated the businesses more than a decade ago, concluding that they were essentially separate industries. And as I reported earlier this month, the legitimacy of Shari’s reign atop Viacom is still being litigated in a California court where the Redstone family is continuing a legal battle against Manuela Herzer, Sumner’s longtime friend and girlfriend.

The suit, itself, is predicated upon whether Herzer committed “elder abuse” against the media tycoon before Shari had her removed from his Beverly Hills estate in October 2015. The Redstones want back the $75 million or so that Sumner gave to Herzer over the years in the forms of gifts, cash, and California real estate. Herzer has argued, in return, that Sumner gave her the gifts willingly and that Shari manipulated her father into kicking her out of the house and into cutting her out of his will. Herzer has also argued that Sumner was suffering from deteriorating health, and was unaware of Shari’s actions.

Sumner’s representatives and daughter have argued that the tycoon was indeed mentally competent at the time, and was subsequently alert when he signed off on the crucial documents that gave effective control of National Amusements to Shari in 2016. Robert Klieger, a private attorney for both Sumner and Shari and also a CBS board member, has continued to reiterate Sumner’s acuity. This spring, he told me that he meets with Sumner “regularly,” at least “once a week,” and “FaceTime[s]” with him “frequently.”

Lately, however, Klieger has begun to change his tune. In a recent filing in the Herzer suit, Klieger provides a different take on the state of Sumner’s health. Now, in an effort to convince the judge in the case to schedule a trial in the next four months, Klieger argued that he was asking for the short-term trial date because of Sumner’s “deteriorating health condition,” which suddenly is “not in dispute.” In the filing Klieger also refers to Redstone’s “advanced age and declining physical health.”

To help make his argument, Klieger attached to his motion the declaration of Richard Gold, a Los Angeles doctor who has examined Sumner and has been a witness in a variety of Redstone-related litigations. (In an August 2017 court hearing, Klieger said that Dr. Gold “sees” Sumner “several times a week” and has reported that he “suffers from a heart condition” and that he “suffers from essentially a swallowing condition that can lead to aspiration pneumonia, which he’s had on several occasions and at 94 is a very life-threatening condition.”) Given Sumner’s age, none of this is particularly surprising. What’s notable, however, is that Klieger is now admitting as much, when for years he has been arguing that Sumner is just fine, thank you very much.

Klieger no longer replies to my requests for comment on particular stories, insisting instead that, “as usual, Mr. Cohan’s ‘reporting’ is bursting with willful inaccuracies that could not withstand the most basic fact-checking.” Ronald Richards, an attorney for Herzer, did not respond to a request for comment about Klieger’s effort to convince the judge to speed up the Redstone-Herzer trial into early 2019.

What’s at stake in this litigation is nothing less than the Redstone family’s control of CBS and Viacom. Having successfully excised Moonves, a corporate love affair has broken out between Shari Redstone and CBS’s management. The New York Post reportedly recently that not only is a merger between CBS and Viacom back on, it is imminent, despite Shari’s pledge that she would wait at least another two years before suggesting it for a third time. Her control of the two companies now seems absolute, unless of course the judge in California rules that Sumner was not competent, in 2016, when he signed the documents giving his once-estranged daughter control of the family empire. Should that happen, then all bets are off. (A spokesperson for Shari Redstone did not respond to a request for comment.)

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