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By Keach Hagey and Joe Flint 

Lawyers for Sumner Redstone have filed court documents laying out why the media mogul evicted a female companion living at his mansion in October, precipitating a legal battle that goes to trial on Friday.

The documents, filed on Thursday in a Los Angeles court, claim Mr. Redstone removed Manuela Herzer from his home because she had lied to him and tried to block other women he cared about from making contact with him.

Ms. Herzer filed a lawsuit last November claiming that Mr. Redstone, the 92-year-old controlling shareholder of Viacom Inc. and CBS Corp., lacked mental capacity when he made the decisions affecting her. Mr. Redstone also removed her as his health-care agent in the event he would become incapacitated and wrote her out of his will.

Ms. Herzer is suing to be reinstated as Mr. Restone's health care agent.

Meanwhile, her lawyers presented a counternarrative in separate court documents Thursday. They claim the decision to remove Ms. Herzer as health-care agent was "based almost exclusively on false and/or misleading information provided to Redstone by vulgar and morally corrupt nurses and other employees who carried a grudge against Herzer and wanted her gone."

The case has been closely tracked in Hollywood and on Wall Street. If Mr. Redstone is found by the court to have lacked mental capacity, it could have major implications for his media empire, which includes cable channels such as MTV and Comedy Central, CBS and Paramount Pictures.

Mr. Redstone's attorneys said in their documents that Ms. Herzer didn't challenge Mr. Redstone's mental capacity at any point before the mid-October moment when she was evicted. They allege in the documents that she spent more than $350,000 on his credit cards at upscale stores such as Barneys and Bergdorf Goodman in the two months before she was evicted.

That spending was on top of having received, along with Mr. Redstone's ex-girlfriend Sydney Holland, a combined $150 million from Mr. Redstone during the previous years, according to the documents.

Ms. Holland was herself evicted from Mr. Redstone's mansion in August after confessing to infidelity, and Ms. Herzer was made a larger beneficiary in Mr. Redstone's will, according to the documents filed on Thursday.

Mr. Redstone's lawyers also allege in the documents that Ms. Herzer intercepted a letter from Ms. Holland in which she apologized to him. Ms. Herzer then "typed up fake letters from Ms. Holland that were designed to infuriate Mr. Redstone," the lawyers allege in the documents.

The documents allege Ms. Herzer tried to keep Mr. Redstone from seeing who his lawyers in the documents described as his "longtime friend," Terry Holbrook, by instructing the nursing staff to tell him that Ms. Holbrook wasn't available to see him, even when she was.

Mr. Redstone's lawyers plan to call both Ms. Holbrook and Ms. Holland to testify at the trial. They say both will verify Mr. Redstone was mentally competent during their visits with him both before and after mid-October of last year.

Ms. Holbrook couldn't be reached for comment. Ms. Holland didn't respond to a request for comment.

Pierce O'Donnell, a lawyer for Ms. Herzer, on Thursday dismissed these allegations.

Write to Keach Hagey at keach.hagey@wsj.com and Joe Flint at joe.flint@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 06, 2016 02:48 ET (06:48 GMT)

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