Life is Beautiful CEO withdraws creditor’s claim in Tony Hsieh case

The head of the Life is Beautiful festival has withdrawn his creditor’s claim in Tony Hsieh’s probate case.

Justin Weniger, CEO of the downtown Las Vegas music festival, had filed the claim in December “out of an abundance of caution,” in case he was deemed a creditor of the tech mogul’s estate, court records show. Weniger’s lawyers filed paperwork withdrawing the claim on Thursday.

Hsieh died on Nov. 26, 2020, at age 46 from injuries suffered in a Connecticut house fire. His father, Richard, and brother Andrew are overseeing the estate of the former Zappos boss.

Hsieh’s Downtown Project redevelopment company was instrumental in launching Life is Beautiful in 2013. The heavily redacted creditor’s claim filed by Weniger claimed a 27.7 percent equity interest in the festival was “justly due and owned” by Weniger’s company, 1122 Holdings.

Court documents filed Thursday did not indicate why Weniger’s claim was withdrawn.

“This notice of withdrawal is not an admission in relation to the merit and substance of the allegations contained in the claim,” the notice stated.

Lawyers representing Weniger and Hsieh’s family did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In the final years of his life, Hsieh was malnourished, barely slept and hallucinated from ketamine and nitrous oxide use, his family has claimed. Hsieh’s erratic behavior described in court filings include “impulsive, poorly planned” or “incoherent” investments into Park City, Utah.

Other creditor’s claims in Hsieh’s probate case include a $40,000 claim for a custom “ceiling brain prototype; a Florida man who said he is owed nearly $400,000 for helping to sell buses Hsieh had ordered; and a $12.5 million claim from a man who said he was to be paid $450,000 a year under a loosely defined job titled that included working on “random projects like koi fish or tree houses.”

This month, a judge approved a settlement agreement between Hsieh’s estate and his longtime assistant, Jennifer “Mimi” Pham, who was at the center of much of the legal battle over the estate. Pham had filed more than $130 million in creditor’s claims against the estate, but the settlement agreement called for Pham and her boyfriend to instead pay $750,000 to Hsieh’s family.

Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0240. Follow @k_newberg on Twitter.