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Dolly Parton’s manager moves to drop complaint accusing late singer’s nephew of threatening estate

Dolly Parton ’s longtime manager moved Thursday to drop a complaint that accused the late singer’s nephew who acted as her head of security with threatening her estate and its employees.

The proposed dismissal and apparent settlement brought a sudden, unexpected and unexplained end to an ugly rift in the beloved country superstar’s inner circle that began while she was sick with cancer and spilled into public view in the weeks after her Aug. 25 death.

The manager, Danny Nozell, who runs She’s Alive, an entity founded to manage and protect Parton’s estate, had secured a temporary restraining order against Bryan Seaver and his security company, Squadron Augmented Protection Services, in September. Nozell was seeking to turn the order into a permanent injunction against Seaver.

A very brief filing in a Tennessee court Thursday gives no reason why the complaint is being withdrawn. It says only that a proposed order was being drafted for the judge’s approval to dismiss the case without prejudice, meaning it can be refiled again. A court filing from a day earlier said the two sides had reached an agreement, but that gave no details either.

The fight was about to become even more public with the first hearing on the matter that was slated for Tuesday, with the two sides set to argue over the proposed permanent injunction.

She’s Alive terminated Seaver and SAPS in early September, and the following week petitioned for the restraining order against him, arguing that his “terrorizing conduct made their continued retention untenable.”

The petition said that starting shortly before Parton’s death and continuing after, Seaver made threats and aimed them directly at She’s Alive’s “personnel, counsel, and business partners. In writing, he vowed to ‘destroy the entire brand.’”

It says he “called himself ‘literally an international arms dealer and mercenary,’” and said everyone “needs to be worried about what I might do.”


(AP Photo/Andres Kudacki, File)
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