A lawyer for a Broadway producer accused of abusing his 104-year-old mother, philanthropist Brooke Astor, accused her guardians Tuesday of destroying evidence that would show charges against his client are false.

The key example cited by Kenneth Warner, lawyer for Anthony D. Marshall, was a couch in her apartment’s television room, described by Astor’s guardians as “filthy” and “smelly.” The guardians claimed the society grande dame took refuge on the couch, sleeping in a tattered nightgown, to escape the cold in her bedroom.

“All of this turns out to be false,” Mr. Warner said in papers filed yesterday in Manhattan’s state Supreme Court.

He said the guardians asked permission to replace the couch in the TV room, known as the Blue Room, because it was in such bad shape but now they say they had it cleaned.

“It is outrageous and wholly improper that no effort was made to preserve that couch … as evidence for trial,” Mr. Warner said in court papers.

The court has assigned fashion designer Oscar de la Renta’s wife, Annette de la Renta, and J.P. Morgan Chase bank to be Astor’s guardians. Fraser Seitel, spokesman for the petitioners’ and guardians’ lawyer, said the couch was cleaned but he did not know who had it done or what condition it was in before the cleaning.

Mr. Warner’s filing, called an affirmation, apparently intended to show that the allegations against Mr. Marshall were unfounded and to show why the court should grant his client’s multipronged motion of last week. The motion asked for an inventory of everything in Astor’s Park Avenue residence.

“Mr. Marshall knows that an inventory will reveal the true opulence of his mother’s living conditions,” Mr. Warner’s court papers said.

Mr. Marshall, who for 25 years had his mother’ power of attorney, the right to make legal decisions for her, was replaced by the court-appointed guardians after a harsh, “alarmist and false” accusatory petition by his son Philip Marshall.

Philip Marshall, 54, said his frail and ailing grandmother had been reduced to sleeping in a ragged gown on the filthy couch and was subsisting on pureed peas and oatmeal. He accused his father of neglecting her while looting her multimillion-dollar estate.

Anthony Marshall, 82, has denied the elder abuse charge and told the court in motion papers last week that he was worried that his mother’s health had deteriorated since the guardians took over her care.

Mr. Marshall asked the court to let a doctor of his choosing examine his mother and to require the guardians to keep him informed about her health and whereabouts. He also asked the court to restore his right to make her decisions.

Denying he is looting his mother’s estate, Mr. Marshall says in court papers that he increased her personal assets from about $19 million in 1980 to about $82 million currently – after spending about $2.5 million each year on her care.

Astor has used the fortune that husband Vincent Astor left her to contribute millions of dollars to public institutions and to grassroots causes. Her efforts won her a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in 1998.