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Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have been entangled in a legal battle over the French winery they co-owned, Château Miraval, since February 2022According to court documents obtained by PEOPLE, a judge ordered Jolie to turn over previously withheld or redacted communications related to the lawsuitA source exclusively tells PEOPLE that Pitt’s team believes Jolie “has been disingenuous since the start regarding her true intentions about selling her share of the business to Stoli”
Brad Pitt has scored a new procedural legal victory in his ongoing winery dispute with ex-wife Angelina Jolie.
According to court documents obtained by PEOPLE, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ordered Jolie, 50, to turn over previously withheld or “unredacted” communications related to the legal battle over Château Miraval. The ruling was handed down on Wednesday, Dec. 17, just one day before the two-time Oscar winner’s 62nd birthday.
The judge granted Pitt’s motion to compel discovery, ordering Jolie to produce unredacted versions of certain non-attorney communications she had previously shielded under claims of privilege.
“The Court orders Jolie to produce in full, within 45 days of this Order, unredacted versions of the communications exchanged between non-attorneys in the 22 documents identified on Jolie’s February 14, 2025 privilege log with the Document ID numbers set forth in the Appendix to this Order,” the court document read.
A source exclusively tells PEOPLE that Pitt’s team believes “the emails would prove Jolie has been disingenuous since the start regarding her true intentions about selling her share of the business to Stoli.”
Chateau Miraval.
MICHEL GANGNE/AFP via Getty
Paul Murphy, counsel for Jolie in this matter, shared in a statement with PEOPLE: “We’re disappointed by the court’s interpretation of California’s privilege law. The court’s ruling violates that law, undermines Ms. Jolie’s fundamental right to a fair trial, and represents yet another manifestation of Mr. Pitt’s years-long effort to harass and control her. We will appeal.”
Pitt first filed a 2022 lawsuit claiming that his ex-wife had sold her share of Miraval to Tenute del Mondo, the wine division of the Stoli Group, despite a prior agreement that neither would do so unless the other person approved. Jolie denied that agreement and responded by filing a countersuit, claiming the actor-producer has been “waging a vindictive war against” her.
Lawyers for Jolie have also asserted that Pitt refused to buy her out of the business because she did not want to sign a non-disclosure agreement “designed to force her silence about his abuse and cover-up,” referring to a 2016 private jet flight during which the F1 star allegedly was verbally and physically abusive toward his family. (Pitt was not charged by authorities after investigations and Jolie declined to press charges at the time.)
More recently, new court documents showed Pitt sued Jolie for $35 million in damages after her 2021 sale of her share of the winery business.
On Oct. 29, Pitt’s legal team submitted into evidence communications to and from Jolie’s team regarding her 2021 sale of her stake in the French winery the former couple co-owned. One exhibit was a November 2023 email in which the Maria star’s lawyers responded to a lawsuit from Pitt allegedly involving millions in damages.
“The burdensome nature of any production is a matter of Mr. Pitt’s own creation—he is suing Ms. Jolie for $35 million in damages,” wrote Jolie’s lawyers at the time. “As a result, he has to incur the expense of producing the documents that will show (or not show) those damages.”
An October 2023 email from Jolie’s team also mentions that the Fight Club star was “seeking ongoing damages for alleged harm to Miraval’s ongoing operations.”
They also cited “Pitt’s continuing refusals to produce documents relating to the reasons why he needed his four-year NDA covering his personal misconduct,” saying those communications are key “to the heart of our case and must be produced.”
The Once Upon a Time in Hollywood actor and the Eternals star, who share six children — Maddox, 24, Pax, 22, Zahara, 20, Shiloh, 19, twins Knox and Vivienne, 17 — finalized their divorce in December 2024. Jolie had initially filed to dissolve their marriage in September 2016.
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