Brad Pitt Seeks to Dismiss Angelina Jolie’s Request for Plane Incident Messages

Brad Pitt is continuing his legal battle with ex-wife Angelina Jolie, firmly opposing her recent legal requests. Pitt, who is contesting the financial proceedings surrounding their former winery, Château Miraval, has filed a motion to dismiss Jolie’s request for his private communications in Los Angeles County Superior Court. These communications reportedly include messages related to a 2016 family plane trip during which Pitt allegedly attacked Jolie and their children.

According to court documents obtained by USA TODAY, Pitt’s filing states, “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.'” The filing claims that Jolie is seeking these communications as part of her broader efforts to transform this business dispute into a re-litigation of their divorce case.

Jolie’s April motion touches on a nondisclosure agreement she claims Pitt wanted her to sign as a condition of selling her Miraval shares. Her legal team also accused Pitt of controlling and financially draining her, as well as attempting to hide his history of abuse and other misconduct.

Pitt’s attorneys have vehemently opposed Jolie’s requests, referring to her motion as a “sensationalist fishing expedition,” comprising “54 requests seeking wide-ranging and intrusive discovery into some of the most deeply personal aspects of her ex-husband’s life.” Representatives for Jolie have not commented on the matter as of yet.

The dispute over Château Miraval between Pitt and Jolie intensified in 2022, following Jolie’s public allegations of abuse she and their children purportedly suffered at Pitt’s hands during a flight from the winery in France to California. In a filing from October 2022, Jolie’s lawyers accused Pitt of aggressive behavior, claiming he “grabbed Jolie by the head and shook her, and then grabbed her shoulders and shook her again before pushing her into the bathroom wall.” Pitt was also accused of being violent towards some of their children.

Pitt and Jolie share six children: Maddox, Pax, Zahara, Shiloh, and twins Vivienne and Knox, who were between 8 and 15 years old at the time of the alleged incident. In Thursday’s filing, Pitt’s attorneys allege that he volunteered to provide documents sufficient to show everything that occurred on the flight that led to their divorce.

However, Pitt’s legal team asserts that the scope of Jolie’s motion far exceeds details about the family trip. The filing reads, “If Jolie’s requests were really about ‘what happened on that plane’ as she claims, Pitt’s offer should have sufficed.” Pitt’s attorneys claim that Jolie rejected his compromise and sought to compel communication with third parties about various sensitive issues, including therapy, drug and alcohol testing, and actions taken after the flight.

Reports had emerged in September 2016 about Pitt being investigated by the FBI and the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services due to the in-flight incident. Two months later, the FBI confirmed to USA TODAY that the agency had reviewed the allegations and dropped the investigation, with no charges filed against Pitt. He was also cleared of child abuse allegations by the LA County Department of Children and Family Services.

Pitt’s attorneys argue that the communications requested in Jolie’s motion would seriously infringe on Pitt’s privacy rights under the California constitution. These rights protect non-conviction law enforcement records, medical records, drug testing, substance abuse treatment, Pitt’s married life, and its termination.

The motion also addresses Jolie’s concern with the NDA that stalled their Miraval negotiations. The agreement included a “commitment not to denigrate Miraval Provence and its direct and indirect shareholders, including Pitt.” Nonetheless, both Pitt and Jolie would have been free to make claims about each other in their legal proceedings, including their divorce and child custody cases.

Although Jolie described the NDA as “callous and mean-spirited” amid their divorce, Pitt’s team argues that her information requests wouldn’t discover relevant evidence about the NDA proposal but rather seek to embarrass Pitt. The filing concludes, “Jolie cannot meet her burden to show that the relevance of the documents she seeks outweighs Pitt’s countervailing privacy interests—particularly given the publicity surrounding the parties and this case.”

Source: USA TODAY