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Rita Benson LeBlanc, family file suit claiming Tom Benson incompetent to control New Orleans Saints, Pelicans
The shocking struggle for control of the New Orleans Saints and Pelicans escalated Thursday (Jan. 22) as family members associated with Rita Benson LeBlanc filed a lawsuit claiming that the teams' owner and family patriarch Tom Benson is incompetent and is being directed by a manipulative wife and her allies at the highest level of the sports empire.
The suit was filed one day after Tom Benson unexpectedly announced plans to transfer future ownership of the clubs to wife, Gayle, cutting off his daughter, Renee LeBlanc, and his two grandchildren, Ryan LeBlanc and Rita Benson LeBlanc, who until recently had been designated as the heir apparent.
The legal battle lays bare the internal strife within one of Louisiana's richest families and its highest profile business owners, pitting Benson and his wife of 10 years against his adopted daughter and her children.
The lawsuit seeking to block the succession change was filed in Orleans Parish Civil District Court at mid-day Thursday and assigned to Judge Kern Reese. It presents numerous claims that Benson is mentally and physically unfit to manage his personal or business affairs. The petitioners also are requesting an independent board-certified geriatric psychiatrist to examine Benson.
Renee, Rita and Ryan LeBlanc, are named as petitioners in the suit, which claims the 87-year-old Benson's declining health is much worse than publicly known and has rendered him unfit to manage his personal affairs or the business of the New Orleans Saints and New Orleans Pelicans.
The suit attempts to paint Gayle Benson, 67, as a gold-digging opportunist who has taken advantage of her husband's unfit state of health and ostracized family members in grasping for power and riches.
The suit asks the court to appoint Renee LeBlanc, as executor of his sports and business ventures, with Rita Benson LeBlanc in a secondary position.
Among the claims and revelations in the 27-page suit vs. Tom Benson are:
Before she met Tom Benson in 2004, Gayle Benson was in "significant debt and had limited credit." It also questioned her business credentials, claiming she "never owned, operated, or managed a substantial business enterprise and has not received any formal training on how to do so." It also claimed, she "had no interest in football, basketball, or in sports in general, before marrying Tom Benson."
Tom Benson required Gayle to execute a prenuptial agreement prior to their Oct. 29, 2004 marriage that "limited her right to community property during marriage, upon divorce, and upon his death."
Benson became incoherent while boarding a plane in New Orleans to attend the NFL owners' meetings last May, was hospitalized and "underwent a procedure the next morning regarding his stomach." After his well-documented fall at the meetings in Atlanta, his heart rate plummeted during the ambulance ride to the hospital and he held for overnight for "extensive testing."
Benson was hospitalized twice during the Saints' training camp in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., "due to irregular vital signs, weakness and dehydration."
Benson has been "heavily medicated" and has "acknowledged on occasions that he does not know his age, where he is, what day of the week it is, nor what the date is." Benson's diet has deteriorated to the point that he rarely consumes full meals and subsists mainly on "candy, ice cream, sodas and red wine."
Benson's mental acuity and memory have declined so much he "on at least one occasion (he) failed to recognize his daughter, Renee," and "failed to remember or commemorate her birthday." Further, on one occasion, he could not name the current president of the United States, guessing Ronald Reagan and Harry Truman upon prompting.
Gayle Benson urged Tom Benson to attempt to purchase the Fair Grounds Race Course and Slots "despite the fact that it is against NFL rules for team owners to have interests in gambling facilities" and despite the fact that Tom Benson has "never previously expressed an interest in acquiring a gambling operation."
Gayle Benson "systematically isolated Tom Benson to prevent him from his usual interactions with family, friends and advisors, thereby allowing her to unduly influence his decisions to her benefit, rather than the benefit of Tom Benson, his family, the enterprises he founded, and the stakeholders in those enterprises."
Gayle Benson "screens all of Tom Benson's phone calls, emails and regular mail." She also "has dismissed and replaced household staff, and the crew of his boat, as well as the doctors treating and the personal caregivers caring for, Tom Benson, with new individuals."
On Dec. 27, Renee, Rita and Ryan received a letter via email purportedly from Tom Benson saying he never wanted to see Renee, Rita or Ryan again and banning them Saints/Pelicans facility and games, the Benson Towers, the Fox-8 television station and his automobile dealerships. It also stripped them of their ability to give directions or orders and to hire or fire personnel.
On Dec. 29, a Benson assistant "contacted the U.S. Postal Service and forwarded all of the trust mailings to Tom Benson's Metairie office rather than the San Antonio, Texas address where Renee, Rita and Ryan were receiving trust mailings."
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