Brad Pitt has blasted ex Angelina Jolie as “vindictive” in a new lawsuit filed against her.
As reported by DailyMail.com, Pitt has filed legal papers with Los Angeles County Superior Court as part of a long-running legal dispute between the pair over Chateau Miraval, located in south-east France, which the pair acquired in 2008 before their marriage in 2014.
After the couple divorced in 2019, Jolie was cleared to sell her share in 2021 for $164m (£131.2m) before their wider financial settlement was finalized.
In the filing, Pitt’s lawyers say Jolie planned to sell her interest in October to Tenute del Mondo, which is “bent on taking control of Miraval” and is “indirectly owned and controlled by Yuri Shefler, the Russian billionaire who controls the Stoli Group.”
The lawsuit alleged Angelina is trying to sell her shares without allowing Brad his “right of first refusal and profit,” which gives Pitt first refusal to buy her stake if she wanted to sell, the judge has been told.
In previously-filed court documents obtained by ET, Pitt acknowledged that Jolie did pay 40 percent of the $28.4 million purchase price but countered that he put in additional money and time into making the winery a success. In Pitt’s latest filings, he goes even further, saying Miraval was his “passion” and that he turned it “into a multimillion-dollar global business and one of the world’s most highly regarded producers of rosé wine,” while Jolie contributed “nothing to Miraval’s success.”
In the filing, Pitt’s lawyers assert that Jolie intentionally “sought to inflict harm on” her ex-husband by trying to force Pitt into partnership with a stranger, and worse yet, a stranger with poisonous associations and intentions.’, per PEOPLE.
Pitt’s team continues, “Jolie pursued and then consummated the purported sale in secret, purposely keeping Pitt in the dark, and knowingly violating Pitt’s contractual rights.”
Since Jolie sold her share, Shefler has launched a hostile takeover of Miraval and is trying to get ahold of “confidential and proprietary information for the benefit of his competing enterprise,” Pitt’s lawyers say. They also accuse Shefler of having “cutthroat business tactics and dubious professional associations,” which “jeopardizes the reputation of the brand Pitt so carefully built.”
Pitt is seeking damages “in an amount to be proven at trial” plus the purported sale made by Jolie to be declared “null and void.”
