Angelina Jolie has suffered a major blow in her legal battle with Brad Pitt over the Chateau Miraval winery they co-owned. The Hollywood pair continue to war over Jolie's decision to sell her stake in the £400million business to Russian billionaire Yuri Shefler in October 2021.
Fight Club star Pitt is asking LA Superior Court to unwind the sale, claiming the couple had an agreement not to sell to a third party without consent. Jolie claims she backed out of selling her stake to her ex-husband after he asked her to sign an "unconscionable" privacy agreement as part of the deal.
But a US judge has now ruled Jolie must produce all non-disclosure agreements that she agreed with third parties from 2014-22 - after Pitt's attorney John Berlinski insisted her defence is undermined by her routine use of them. He argued that Jolie herself “weaponised” NDAs, and even asked Pitt to sign a broader agreement as part of their divorce talks just six months after the disputed sale.
A source close to Brad said: "Angelina chose to make NDAs a battleground in this case, and now her strategy appears to have backfired spectacularly. Her defence has been exposed as a house of cards, and she will now have to provide details of all of the NDAS she demanded of third parties. There is no question this is a huge setback for her. There is a long way to go but in the context of the case so far, this is a hugely important and far reaching ruling which will be problematic for her defence."
In her ruling, Judge Lia Martin dismissed Jolie’s objections that her own NDAs had “no relevance”. She ordered the Tomb Raider actress to produce all NDAs she proposed, or that were proposed to her by others, regardless of whether they were finalised or agreed. The ruling also obliges Jolie to produce NDAs entered into by companies she controls, as well as documents reflecting the reasons that she or her companies asked for those NDAs.
Angelina Jolie spotted enjoying a coffee date with 'newly single' Paul Mescal
Chateau Miraval, which Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie co-owned (AFP via Getty Images)And the ruling comes less than a fortnight after the court received a witness statement from Jolie’s former bodyguard which detailed her use of NDAs. In the statement, former SAS soldier Tony Webb recalled a conversation he had with Jolie's PA - Michael Vieira - in which he warned him that security contractors he had hired could face legal action if they testified in the couple's family law case.
His statement read: “Mr Vieira... told me that his call should serve as a reminder that those individuals had entered into Non-Disclosure Agreements with Ms Jolie and that I should remind them of that, and if they testified in the family law case, Ms Jolie would sue them. I communicated this message to the two individuals over the phone and they both told me they planned to testify. One of the two individuals, Ross Foster, specified that he intended to testify regardless of the NDA, if he received a court subpoena."
Mr Webb went on to say Jolie's PA repeated her threat to sue the bodyguards in a follow-up phone call, and elaborated on other NDAs she asked others to sign. He said his instructions "included Mr Vieira telling me to present people with non-disclosure agreements on behalf of Ms Jolie and obtain their signatures. For example, Mr Vieira often asked me to provide hotel staff with non-disclosure agreements and to get signatures from them."
His testimony also details a conversation he had with Mr King, in which he claimed he had overheard statements Jolie made to her children "encouraging them to avoid spending time with Pitt during custody visits."
Jolie has now been given a 60-day deadline by the court to produce all relevant documents. The ruling is the latest in a series of pre-trial victories for Pitt. In November Luxembourg court made an order provisionally stripping Shefler of some of the shares he bought from Jolie. The decision broke a 50-50 deadlock between Pitt and Shefler, effectively making Pitt the majority shareholder of the winery pending a fuller hearing on the matter. In March this year, LA Superior Court rejected Jolie’s claims that Pitt’s lawsuit was frivolous and malicious and gave the green light for a trial.
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