Philippe Dauman Request for Swift Sumner Redstone Competency Hearing Granted

Viacom CEO will get day in court on June 7 after Redstone removed him as estate trustee

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A Massachusetts judge has approved Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman’s request for an expedited competency hearing concerning his longtime mentor Sumner Redstone.

Judge George Phelan has set a hearing for the morning of June 7 in Canton, Ma., south of Boston, to review the 93-year-old’s mental capacity.

Dauman brought the request following a decision to remove Redstone from prominent positions within his family and business — as both a trustee to his estate and from the board of theater chain National Amusements.

As Viacom CEO, the French-born Dauman serves the will of the company’s 11-person board of directors, which includes COO Tom Dooley and former TV personality Deborah Norville, on which he still sits along with fellow just-ousted Redstone family trustee George Abrams.

That board has historically voted in Dauman’s favor — including naming him chairman in February via a 10-1 vote, with Sumner’s daughter Shari Redstone as the lone dissenter.

Fellow ousted trustee and Viacom board member George Abrams is also listed on the request.

“I have picked those who are loyal to me and removed those who are not,” the 92-year-old Sumner Redstone said this morning of the additions and subtractions.

He also brought Krutick and National Amusements EVP General Counsel Tad Jankowski aboard his seven-person family trust, replacing Abrams and Dauman: “This is my trust and my decision.”

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