Brad Pitt winery fight against Angelina Jolie pruned but alive

LOS ANGELES (CN) — A California judge on Monday indicated that she would likely allow Brad Pitt’s lawsuit against his ex-wife Angelina Jolie survive, barely, saying she was leaning toward sustaining Jolie’s demurrer on seven out of nine claims.

In either event, Pitt’s lawyers are likely to refile a revised version of the lawsuit.

The star-studded legal dispute revolves around Miraval, an estate in the south of France that once served as Pitt and Jolie’s family retreat chateau — they were married there — as well as headquarters for their successful wine-making operation. Following the couple’s divorce, Jolie tried to sell her 50% stake in Miraval to Pitt, but negotiations broke down over a nondisclosure agreement that Jolie refused to sign. She then sold her share to SPI group, an alcohol distributor owned by Yuri Shefler, a Russian-born billionaire now living in Geneva, for $67 million.

Pitt sued Jolie in 2022, claiming the two had a private understanding that neither would sell their half-stake in Miraval without the other’s permission.

“Jolie’s breach, if allowed to stand, will deprive Pitt of his right to enjoy his private home — without sharing ownership with a stranger — and to secure his position in the business he built from scratch for the long-term benefit of his family,” Pitt’s complaint read.

Pitt claims he invested way more time and money into the Miraval wine business, which makes high-end rosé. He has also sued her in the court of Luxembourg, claiming that his gift to her of 10% of the estate, making them equal partners shortly before their wedding, was never valid, and that Pitt really owns Miraval 60/40.

At a hearing in Los Angeles Superior Court on Monday, Pitt’s lawyer Jonathan Moses told the court that Miraval was Pitt’s “passion,” as well as “one of his life’s work.”

“The reason why we’re here is, she sold her interest to a complete stranger,” Moses said. The sale was “allowing this stranger into his life’s work.”

Judge Lia Martin said little during the hearing. She did not make her tentative ruling publicly available, though the attorneys all confirmed after the hearing that she said she was leaning toward sustaining the demurrer on seven of nine claims — some with prejudice, some without.

The two counts that survived in her tentative ruling were two similar claims, breach of implied-in-fact contract and breach of quasi-contract." Jolie’s attorney, Paul Murphy, tried to convince the judge that those claims should also be dismissed.

“Pitt does not allege any writing memorializing this purported agreement. He does not even allege an oral agreement,” Jolie says in her demurrer. “Instead, Pitt posits that, through conduct alone, he somehow understood that Jolie granted him the specific right to consent to or veto — for the rest of her life and regardless of circumstance — any attempt by Jolie to sell her interest in the chateau to anyone else.”

In other words, Murphy said, it doesn’t matter what Pitt understood their agreement to be, it matters “what a reasonable person would interpret the agreement to be,” based on their conduct. And their conduct, he said, all pointed to Jolie having the right to sell something she owned — which was, after all, simply “monetizing an asset.”

Both sets of lawyers declined to comment on the hearing.

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