‘Manufacturing Allegations’: Brad Pitt Fires Back at $350 Million Lawsuit Brought by Angelina Jolie’s Former Company
Pitt is firing back in court.
Apr. 17 2024, Updated 12:24 p.m. ET
Brad Pitt claimed the $350 million lawsuit filed by Angelina Jolie’s former company was an act of retaliation – and said the allegations in the company are not based in reality.
According to court documents obtained by RadarOnline.com Pitt denied all allegations of wrongdoing in the suit brought by his ex-wife’s former company, Nouvel.
Pitt denied all allegations of wrongdoing in the countersuit.
As RadarOnline.com previously reported, Pitt and Jolie are involving an ugly court war over a $164 million French estate/winery named Chateau Miraval.
The exes purchased the property in 2008 while married. Pitt said they planned to pass it down to their children. The actor said she spent a ton of time and money building the estate into a profitable wine business.
The couple split in 2016 after an incident on a private jet. The parties have yet to finalize a divorce settlement. In 2021, Jolie told Pitt she wanted out of the business and to sell her stake in the company.
Pitt and his business associates worked out a deal to pay Jolie $50 million for her interest. However, the talks fell apart after developments in the divorce case.
Jolie is accused of breaking a promise not to sell her stake without Pitt's approval.
Jolie sold her stake in Chateau to a company called Stoli which is run by a man named Yuri Shefler. Pitt sued Jolie demanding the court void the transaction. He said Jolie broke a promise not to sell to a third party without his consent. To make matters worse, he accused her of choosing to sell to a Russian oligarch to tarnish the brand’s name. He claimed Stoli attempted a hostile takeover of the business he worked hard to build.
The actress denied she had to get Pitt’s approval to sell.
In response to the lawsuit, Nouvel, the company that Jolie sold to Stoli and that held her stake in the winery, filed a $250 million countersuit against Pitt.
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Pitt in an advertisment for the company
The company accused Pitt of “waging a vindictive war” against his ex-wife. “To be clear, it is Pitt, and not Jolie, Nouvel or any of the other Defendants, who has acted in a hostile, destructive, and illegal manner. Pitt's behavior has caused serious harm to Nouvel,” the countersuit read.
Nouvel accused Pitt of freezing Nouvel out of Chateau’s business. It said Pitt had wasted company” assets, spending millions on vanity projects, including more than $1 million on swimming pool renovations and other funds restoring a recording studio."
At the time, a source close to Pitt said, “This is just the latest in a series of deliberate efforts to misdirect, recycle and reposition the truth of what has happened over the last six years, thinking that reasonable people would be duped by these obvious misrepresentations.”
In his recent response, Pitt said after he sued to void Jolie’s sale to, “Russian billionaire Yuri Shefler and his Stoli spirits conglomerate, Stoli retaliated by manufacturing allegations of misconduct and filing this cross- action through Nouvel. Shefler and Stoli bought Nouvel to gain control of its indirect interest in Château Miraval, the home and vineyard that Pitt built into a world-class winery.”
The $164 million estate at the center of the fight.
Pitt said the countersuit is “nothing more than another front in Stoli’s battle for control of Miraval, a business it played no role in creating.”
He claimed the allegations in their countersuit were “drummed up by Stoli as part of its hostile takeover strategy and in an effort to obtain litigation leverage is evidenced by, among many other things, the fact that Stoli’s CEO was publicly lauding the exact same improvements to Miraval that Nouvel now alleges were “vanity projects” mere months before Nouvel filed its initial Cross-Complaint in this action.”
His response added, “Nouvel’s allegations are the height of cynicism. Far from causing damage to Miraval, Pitt’s disproportionate investments, commitment of his time, recruitment of winemaker Marc Perrin, and association with the brand is precisely what has transformed Miraval from a failing wine business into a multimillion-dollar international enterprise that has captured the unsolicited attention of a major spirits conglomerate. As will be demonstrated at trial, Nouvel’s allegations are entirely unfounded.”
Pitt demanded the $350 million countersuit be thrown out of court. A source close to the actor tells RadarOnline.com that the cross-complaint and Jolie's efforts in court are part of a years-long effort to drag out litigation.