LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Multiple lawsuits continue over former Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh's estate including one involving his former lawyer Puoy Premsrirut.
In a new court filing obtained by Channel 13, lawyers for Hsieh's estate outlined the decline of his mental health, arguing he wasn't well enough to conduct business transactions over the last year of his life.
The 94-page court filing accuses four people of taking advantage of Hsieh's diminished mental state in the year before his death, including Las Vegas attorney Puoy Primsrirut, real estate developers Andrew Donner and Todd Kessler, and investor Tom Spiegel — who are suing the Hsieh estate for millions of dollars.
In a counter-suit filed Friday, lawyers for Hsieh's estate argue the entrepreneur became more and more reliant on drugs like ketamine and nitrous oxide (more commonly known as laughing gas or whippets) in the year before his untimely death.
This photo is from September 2020, when lawyers claim Hsieh was using up to 50 nitrous oxide cartridges a day:
In the court filing, lawyers state Hsieh's use of ketamine began in late 2019, when someone suggested he use it to ease his "significant social anxiety." However, Hsieh's estate said it caused him to suffer from "delusional thinking" and "delusions of grandeur resulting in erratic, nonsensical, and destructive behavior."
"He became convinced that all humans were living in a simulation created by artificial intelligence similar to the premise of the popular Matrix movie series," one passage read. "He was convinced that with the help of ketamine, he could nearly instantaneously learn special skills needed to defeat the simulation and save humanity."
13 INVESTIGATES | Tony Hsieh: The rise, the fall, the future
Hsieh's estate said it became so bad that after he acted bizarrely while officiating a wedding in February 2020, his friends staged an intervention and asked him to go to rehab. Hsieh checked into a rehab facility that month but left after 14 days.
Court documents state he continued to abuse hallucinogenic and dissociative substances leading up to a bus trip in Montana in June 2020.
According to another passage:
"Tony suffered from multiple psychotic episodes during which he destroyed his bus (believing that he and his friends were in the middle of an active shooter situation), proposed a suicide pact so that he and his friends could escape the AI simulation that he believed they were in, and offered half his net worth to a handful of individuals to join him on his "Park City Project."
Hsieh's estate said he was hospitalized after the incident and that's when his longtime general counsel left, describing the situation as "an approaching freight train she could not stop but which she did not want to enable."
That's when Hsieh hired Premsrirut, a Las Vegas-based attorney who sued the Hsieh estate for legal fees after Hsieh's death.
In July 2020, Hsieh began investments in the "Park City Project." His estate said he believed he could "create world peace through the creation of a 'Country Zero' populated by people who would travel to Park City to stay on his 'ranch' while learning about and living on 'Earth Time.'"
Hsieh claimed it would be a cashless theme park where visitors would participate in activities to earn seashells that could be exchanged for things like food, balloon rides, and spa days.
VEGAS VISIONARY: Park City, Utah leads to adventure, warning signs for Tony Hsieh
Lawyers for his estate claim the plans were "not rational, logical, or sustainable" and show his mental decline.
His family claims they tried to intervene and called local police to do welfare checks on Tony to "help him escape those that were exploiting him." However, his estate claims people in Park City received advance notice of these welfare checks and cleaned Hsieh up before police arrived.
"These individuals reportedly arranged for advance notice by using Tony's money to make political contributions to the then-mayor," the lawsuit alleges.
Lawyers representing Hsieh's estate claim Premsrirut and other people in Hsieh's circle should have realized something was wrong and seen that he was unwell.
"Tony's house and room resembled that of a homeless camp. The interior of his house contained broken glass, dog feces, rotten food, and melted wax from the candles Tony used to replace electricity at the house," one passage reads. "Tony's burning of candles caused fire alarms to regularly sound in the middle of the night. People were designated to watch Tony at all hours of the night out of concern due to the abundance of lit candles."
According to Hsieh's estate, Premsrirut saw first-hand how bad things were getting and didn't do anything to stop it.
"On October 25, 2020, Premsrirut consulted with a medical doctor to discuss having Tony involuntarily committed," court documents said. "Tony's behavior at the time was extremely concerning. Witnesses reported Tony intentionally walking barefoot through broken glass throughout his properties so that people could find him without calling his name by following the trail of blood he left behind."
Court documents state Hsieh was hospitalized four days later and that he told medical providers he was "crystallizing" and didn't know what was real and what was not.
Hsieh died in a house fire in Connecticut in November 2020.
Authorities said Hsieh had retreated to a shed after fighting with his girlfriend. Witness reports said Hsieh had a blanket near candles with a propane tank at the time.
He was 46 years old and left no will behind when he died.
Since then, the estate has faced several lawsuits from former associates, including former business partner Tony Lee, former associate Justin Weniger and his company 1122 Holdings, longtime assistant Jennifer "Mimi" Pham, and former project manager Mark Evensvold.
