Why Brad Pitt wants Angelina Jolie’s request for messages regarding the plane incident to be dismissed
In his continuous legal battle with his ex-wife, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt is fighting back in court.
Pitt, who has been challenging the way the former couple’s winery, Chateau Miraval, is run financially, filed a move in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Thursday to have Jolie’s request for his private conversations dismissed.Among the messages are ones from a 2016 family jet trip where Jolie and her kids are said to have been attacked by Pitt…
The filing adds, according to court documents, «These private, third-party communications are far removed from the issues and allegations in this case, and in many cases, they have nothing but the most tenuous relationship to ‘what happened on that plane.»
Nevertheless, Jolie is determined to use this commercial disagreement as an opportunity to reopen the former couple’s divorce case, so she wants them nonetheless.
Jolie’s April action concerns a nondisclosure agreement that, according to her team, Pitt had her to sign in order to purchase her shares in Miraval. Additionally, Pitt’s lawyer for the «Maleficent» actress charged that her husband was «unrelentingly trying to control and financially drain» her and that he was «attempting to hide his history of abuse, control, and coverup.»
Pitt, on the other hand, has sharply criticized Jolie’s request, referring to it as a “sensationalist fishing expedition” through his counsel. The move consists of “54 requests seeking wide-ranging and intrusive discovery into some of the most deeply personal aspects of her ex-husband.
Brad Pitt claims that he consented to «show everything» that happened during the 2016 flight.
When Jolie revealed that she and her kids had been abused by her ex-husband while on a flight in 2022, Pitt and Jolie’s argument over the winery intensified.
Pitt allegedly «grabbed Jolie by the head and shook her, and then grabbed her shoulders and shook her again before pushing her into the bathroom wall,» according to a filing made by Jolie’s attorneys in October 2022, on a flight from the Chateau Miraval winery for California.
During the argument, Pitt was also charged with using violent behavior toward a few of his kids.
Six of Pitt and Jolie’s children, Maddox, Pax, Zahara, Shiloh, and the twins Vivienne and Knox, were between the ages of eight and fifteen when the alleged incident occurred.
Pitt «voluntarily offered to produce documents sufficient to show everything that occurred on the flight that precipitated the ex-couple’s divorce,» according to the filing filed on Thursday by Pitt’s counsel.
However, Jolie’s legal team said that the motion goes beyond specifics regarding their family vacation.
«Pitt’s offer should have sufficed if Jolie’s requests were really about ‘what happened on that plane,’ as she claims,» the complaint states.
However, Jolie rejected Pitt’s accommodation and proceeded to compel his communications with third parties, including his closest allies, regarding sensitive matters such as the therapy he voluntarily entered into following the incident on the flight in an attempt to improve himself, the ‘drug and alcohol testing’ he is purported to have undergone, his alleged ‘overuse or abuse of alcohol,’ and other actions taken following the flight.'»
According to rumors that surfaced in September 2016, Pitt was the subject of an FBI and Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services investigation into the in-flight altercation.
The actor was not charged after the FBI informed USA TODAY two months later that it had evaluated the claims and ended its investigation; the LA County Department of Children and Family Services likewise cleared him of any child abuse charges.
Brad Pitt’s lawyers claim that Angelina Jolie’s motion violates his right to privacy. They argue that under the California constitution, which «protects non-conviction law enforcement records, medical records, drug testing and substance abuse treatment, Pitt’s married life and the termination thereof,» the communications that Jolie’s motion requests would constitute a «serious intrusion into Pitt’s privacy rights.»
The motion by the Oscar-winning actor also takes up Jolie’s disagreement with the NDA, which put an end to the former couple’s Miraval negotiations.
«Commitment not to denigrate Miraval Provence and its direct and indirect shareholders, including (Pitt)» was one of the agreements’ clauses. Pitt and Jolie, however, would have been allowed to speak disparagingly of one another in court during their divorce and child custody battles.
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Jolie later called the NDA a «callous and mean-spirited demand» during her divorce from Pitt, but according to his team, the actress’s information requests would «embarrass Pitt» rather than «discover relevant evidence» in support of the NDA proposal.
«Considering the publicity surrounding the parties and this case, Jolie cannot meet her burden to demonstrate that the relevance of the documents she seeks outweighs Pitt’s countervailing privacy interests,» the brief states.
