A Widower Spent $500,000 Proving He Was Right to Keep His Daughter Away From Her Grandparents. The Judge Agreed.

Sherry Naso was 37 when she died of a brain tumor in April 2024. Her parents, both doctors, had spent months telling her the returning symptoms were Prozac withdrawal and that she should wait it out. Court records contain text messages in which they discouraged her from seeing another doctor.

A family friend who is a neurologist eventually pushed her toward the ER scan that found a 4.2-cm tumor. She came out of surgery in a coma and died 11 days later.

Sherry was originally diagnosed with breast cancer in 2017, went through chemo and radiation, and was in remission when she married Scott in 2020. Laila was born via surrogate in 2021.

The day Sherry died, according to Scott, her parents pinned 3-year-old Laila to the floor while her grandfather, a pediatrician, pushed a syringe of prednisone into her mouth. He testified he was treating her for croup.

The day after, Sherry’s father closed his pediatric practice. Her mother resigned her pathology position. Both let their medical licenses expire shortly after.

Scott cut contact that summer. Her parents sued him under Rhode Island’s grandparent visitation statute, one of the strongest in the country. The court initially ordered one supervised hour of visitation every other week.

Visits paused during a Department of Health probe Scott initiated. He stopped them unilaterally in January 2025. He was held in contempt and fined $2,500.

He was also held in contempt for badmouthing the grandparents to Laila, and the judge criticized him for prioritizing his own interests in the litigation.Trial ran from October 2025 through April 2026. The ruling turned on a recording.

Six weeks after Sherry’s death, two sisters who were family friends of the grandparents visited Scott and recorded him without his knowledge. On the tape he says he believes Sherry’s parents cost her her life and he doesn’t trust them around Laila.

The grandparents submitted the recording as proof Scott was alienating their granddaughter. Judge Felix Gill called it an invasion of privacy. He also said it corroborated that Scott’s distrust was genuine and long-held, not manufactured for the litigation.

On April 23, 2026, Gill denied the petition, ruling the grandparents hadn’t proven Scott was being unreasonable in cutting them off.

Scott says he has spent more than $500,000 in legal fees and is appealing the contempt portions of the ruling. The ruling does not find the grandparents caused Sherry’s death and there has been no malpractice determination.

In his still-pending DOH complaint, Scott alleges Sherry’s father wrote more than 100 prescriptions for her and more than 36 for Laila before her third birthday. He argues the pattern fits factitious disorder imposed on another, the diagnosis formerly known as Munchausen by proxy. The grandparents dispute all of it.