PHOTOS: See The Bedridden 83-year-old Veteran Fighting Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom for His Home
RadarOnline.com has obtained shocking photos of the 83-year-old Army veteran battling Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom over his $15 million California home.
The harrowing photographs of Carl Westcott inside an undisclosed residential health facility were submitted to the courts as evidence in the David vs Goliath battle with the A-list couple hell-bent on snatching up the Santa Barbara property.
Westcott, the businessman founder of 1-800-Flowers, suffers from Huntington’s Disease, a brain disorder known to cause progressive dementia, but that hasn’t stopped the Roar singer and her Lord of the Rings fiancé from aggressively trying to swipe the eight-bedroom and 11-bathroom spread.
As RadarOnline.com previously reported, Westcott has been engaged in a three-year legal battle with Perry and Bloom after he signed documents agreeing to see the home three days after a debilitating six-hour back surgery.
The couple dispatched their rep, Bernie Gudvi to door-knock the convalescing Westcott and somehow convinced him to sign documents, according to court documents obtained by RadarOnline.com.
It is still unclear why Gudvi, a self-described veteran who served in Vietnam, targeted Westcott who had just purchased the property and did not grant any real estate broker a listing to market the home.
Westcott realized his mistake when the painkillers wore off and wanted to rescind the contract – but the couple’s agent threatened to drag the elderly vet to court because Perry and Bloom are refusing to walk away from the deal.
Westcott instead sued Gudvi claiming he was “incapacitated’” at the time.
Aside from the gut-wrenching photos of Westcott surrounded by his family, his lawyers also included evidence from an expert witness, renowned Dr. Garry W. Small, who explained how Westcott may have inadvertently signed the purchasing agreement.
“In many ways, it appears that Mr. Westcott, a businessperson for most of his life, was repeating familiar behaviors (reviewing contracts sent to him, making counter offers, having discussions with his real estate agent/advisor, looking at new potential homes to purchase, etc.) without appreciating the real-life nature of what he was doing or the effects it would have on his life,” the court documents stated.
Dr. Small, a board-certified psychiatrist and dementia expert who remains an Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, determined that Westcott was of “unsound mind and he lacked the ability to understand the nature, terms and consequences of a contract, including the one to sell his home, and thus, he was unable to give free and voluntary consent.”
The medical evidence also showed Westcott was prescribed the dementia/Alzheimer’s medication donepezil three months prior to signing the purchasing agreement because of his cognitive decline, Dr. Small noted in his report.
Despite the extensive medical examination of Westcott’s condition, Gudvi is desperately trying to block Dr. Small from testifying, arguing his testimony would be speculative. But Westcott’s lawyer, Andrew J. Thomas, fired back charging Gudvi’s expert medical witness would also be equally unqualified.
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“Mr. Gudvi seeks to present the expert opinion testimony of his medical expert, ….while simultaneously claiming that the expert opinion testimony of Dr. Small should be excluded,” Thomas stated in his court documents.
“Aside from being a preposterous argument, the exclusion of Dr. Small’s expert opinions would leave Mr. Westcott in an untenably prejudicial position and result in a prejudicial evidentiary error that would likely require reversal of any judgment in favor of Mr. Gudvi.”
Gudvi did not return messages left on his cell phone by RadarOnline.com.
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