Redstone granddaughter’s former assistant drops fraud claim

 A former personal assistant to a granddaughter of the late media magnate Sumner Redstone has dropped a fraud claim against her in his lawsuit, in which he alleges that she told acquaintances she intended to have him “killed or seriously injured” in 2021 after he stopped working for her.

Scott Michael Nathan’s amended Los Angeles Superior Court complaint against Keryn Redstone, filed Thursday, now alleges defamation, breach of oral contract, intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress and intentional interference with contractual relations. He still seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages. A representative for Redstone could not be immediately reached.

The fraud claim within the original suit brought Aug. 24 alleged that Redstone contacted PayPal and complained that Nathan had stolen money from her, causing him to have a deficit of more than $50,000 in his account and damaging his credit. Nathan still maintains the PayPal incident occurred, but now incorporates it into his other causes of action.

Redstone’s grandfather, a billionaire and former Viacom chairman, died in Los Angeles in August 2020 at age 97.

Nathan works as an estate manager and personal assistant who provides services to clients who need help managing their lives. He and Redstone met in 2017 and in August of that year, she called saying she wanted to hire him as her estate manager and personal assistant to manage her life, offering a $50,000 bonus upon starting work, the amended suit states.

Nathan accepted.

“His job was, in summary, to manage her otherwise chaotic life,” the amended suit states.

Keryn Redstone “appears to have severe mental health and substance abuse problems and is so dysfunctional that she cannot manage her domestic affairs,” according to the amended suit, which further alleges that Nathan’s job included cooking meals, ordering groceries, shopping for her and managing her home.

Keryn Redstone paid Nathan and reimbursed him for his expenses via PayPal, but he was never given the promised bonus, the amended suit states.

After Nathan helped Keryn Redstone move into a new home in Brentwood in 2021, she asked him to work for her on a fulltime basis and move into her residence, the suit states. She once offered him $24,000 if he left his apartment for her residence, but she reneged, the amended suit alleges.

Nathan stopped working for Redstone on Oct. 1, 2021, prompting her to start “a vendetta of threats, lies and intimidation” against the plaintiff, including telling several acquaintances that he had committed various crimes of theft or violence against her and that she intended to have him “killed or seriously injured,” the amended suit states.

Redstone was aware that the people to whom she spoke knew Nathan and would feel obligated to tell him what she had said, causing him to become “terrified and in fear for his life and personal safety because he believed that Redstone was so angry, wealthy and deranged that she was capable of paying a criminal to have him killed or badly beaten up,” according to the amended suit.

Nathan continues to suffer severe emotional distress, the amended suit states.

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