Sumner stock theater

Redstone competency drama on main stage

The health of media mogul Sumner Redstone is once again front and center in a dispute destined to shape the futures of CBS and Viacom.

The most recent spat centers on a video of 95year-old Redstone — whose family-owned National Amusements Inc. controls 80 percent of CBS and Viacom — that the TV network submitted as evidence of the mogul’s lack of mental capacity.

On Wednesday, after a hearing in Delaware Chancery Court, Judge Andre Bouchard ruled the video would not be made public but would remain admissible as evidence.

CBS, which was also denied a request to depose Redstone, alleges he lacked the capacity to vote in May on a change in CBS’ bylaws.

NAI made the bylaw change to require CBS’ board to approve any stock dividend by a 90 percent vote. The sudden change was aimed at thwarting CBS’ attempt to reduce NAI’s control of CBS — via a stockvoting dividend to all shareholders — to 20 percent.

NAI claimed a mentally competent Redstone voted for the change in his capacity as NAI’s chief executive.

CBS countered that Sumner lacked the wherewithal to have grasped the change’s implications — a view the secret video, taken by a CBS director in January, was meant to bolster.

“The NAI parties are trying to have it both ways: claiming Mr. Redstone is participating in NAI board meetings and this litigation while asserting health issues to shield him,” CBS stated in court papers.

CBS said on Wednesday that it was pleased with the court’s ruling “the tape is relevant to the issues in this case” — even though, for the time being, it will remain under seal.

CBS added the day’s other rulings will permit “appropriate discovery from NAI on the issue of who controls NAI and will also give us a full opportunity to obtain highly rele- vant documents relating to NAI’s coup against the Viacom board in 2016.”

Sumner’s competence was already an issue in 2016, when then-Viacom chief Philippe Dauman resisted being ousted by NAI on grounds that Shari Redstone, Sumner’s daughter and NAI’s president, was orchestrating the coup to gain company control.

A settlement awarding Dauman $72 million to leave resolved the suits.

CBS claims Shari’s goal in this case is to eliminate CBS chief Les Moonves’ resistance to combining the company with Viacom.