LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — A lawyer suing the estate of late Las Vegas entrepreneur Tony Hsieh claims the former Zappos CEO’s family was not concerned with his apparent drug misuse in the months before his death, court documents said.
Hsieh died in a house fire in November 2020 in Connecticut. He was 46. In December 2020, a judge named his father, Richard Hsieh, and brother, Andrew Hsieh, as special co-administrators of his estate since the late tech visionary did not have a will. Andrew Hsieh resigned as a special administrator in July.
Lawyers for Hsieh’s estate have repeatedly written in court documents that Hsieh did not have the mental capacity to sign off on contracts in the months and years leading up to his death. In an April filing, lawyers included a photo of the tech visionary holding a nitrous oxide canister.
Court documents filed by Hsieh’s family last year indicated Hsieh used ketamine and nitrous oxide in the years before his death. According to friends, Hsieh used “as many as 50 cartridges of nitrous oxide a day, often in public, or during ‘meetings’ with people,” documents said. Court documents also said Hsieh’s bedroom was “littered with hundreds of spent nitrous oxide cartridges.”
Lawyers representing Hsieh’s estate made the allegations in their response to a lawsuit from Hsieh’s former lawyer, Puoy Premsrirut. She is seeking payment per a creditor’s claim, documents said.
As the 8 News Now Investigators have reported, while Hsieh lived in Las Vegas, he had purchased several properties and was living most of the last year of his life in Park City, Utah. Previous court filings have estimated his wealth at nearly $850 million. Lawyers for the estate claim Premsrirut was aware that Hsieh was “unwell” and “that people were taking financial advantage of him, and that Tony needed professional help for his mental health and drug abuse issues.”
In court documents filed May 12, lawyers for Premsrirut said Richard Hsieh “had zero compunctions about his son’s business acumen or his capacity while his son was alive, nor even in the weeks and months after his death.” They include a text message they said is between Richard Hsieh and Premsrirut from November 2020 about possibly publicly addressing Tony’s substance misuse.
“I wouldn’t use the words ‘struggle,’ ‘’abuse’ etc. because they are not true. Our understanding is that, as part of his curiosity and desire for experiences, he experimented many unconventional approaches to explore his spirit, soul, and subconscious including some substances which have been recommended by various experts in many best selling [sic] books,” Richard Hsieh reportedly texted to Premsrirut, according to the lawsuit.
Premsrirut previously filed a lawsuit against the estate to be paid for her legal services under her original contract and for her work “in sorting out various personal and business matters in which Tony Hsieh was involved,” court documents said. In the weeks before Hsieh’s death in 2020, she “consulted with a medical doctor to discuss having Tony involuntarily committed,” lawyers said.
A month before his death, Hsieh purchased the Zappos campus for $70 million, “over $30 million more than the property’s value as of Tony’s date of death just five weeks later,” lawyers for the estate said.
Lawyers for Premsrirut write in the documents that two others, including Hsieh’s cousin, advised him on business transactions.
In October 2020, Hsieh’s brother became so concerned about his brother’s health, he asked that “vitamins and protein supplements” be slipped into his food, documents said. Andrew Hsieh had been offered a $1 million salary to take care of his brother at the time, previous court records said.
Lawyers for all parties involved have never commented publicly on the proceedings. Hsieh helped revitalize downtown Las Vegas and is revered for his service to the community.
