Brad Pitt seeks dismissal of Angelina Jolie's request for messages about plane incident

Brad Pitt is putting up a fight in court in his ongoing legal battle with ex-wife Angelina Jolie.

Pitt, who has been contesting the financial handling of the former couple’s winery Château Miraval, filed a motion to dismiss Jolie’s request for his private communications in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Thursday. The communications include messages regarding a family plane trip in 2016, in which Pitt allegedly attacked Jolie and their children.

“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 reads, according to court documents obtained Tuesday by USA TODAY.

“Jolie, however, wants them anyway as part of her efforts to turn this business dispute into a re-litigation of the former couple’s divorce case.”

Jolie’s April motion relates to a nondisclosure agreement that her team claims Pitt wanted her to sign as a condition of buying her Miraval shares. The “Maleficent” star’s attorney also accused Pitt of “unrelenting efforts to control and financially drain” her, as well as “attempting to hide his history of abuse, control and coverup."

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However, Pitt has slammed Jolie’s request, with his attorneys calling the motion a “sensationalist fishing expedition,” which consists of “54 requests seeking wide-ranging and intrusive discovery into some of the most deeply personal aspects of her ex-husband’s life.”

USA TODAY has reached out to representatives for Jolie for comment.

Brad Pitt says he agreed to ‘show everything’ that occurred on 2016 plane ride

Pitt and Jolie's dispute over the winery escalated in 2022 when Jolie opened up about abuse she and her children allegedly suffered at the hands of her ex-husband on a flight.

In an October 2022 filing, Jolie's lawyers alleged Pitt "grabbed Jolie by the head and shook her, and then grabbed her shoulders and shook her again before pushing her into the bathroom wall," during a flight from the Chateau Miraval winery in France to California. Pitt was also accused of getting violent with some of his children during the altercation.

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 Pitt “voluntarily offered to produce documents sufficient to show everything that occurred on the flight that precipitated the ex-couple’s divorce.”

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But the actor’s legal team said the scope of Jolie’s motion extends beyond the details of their family trip.

“If Jolie’s requests were really about ‘what happened on that plane’ as she claims, Pitt’s offer should have sufficed,” the filing reads.

“Jolie, however, rejected Pitt’s compromise and moved to compel his communications with third parties — including his most trusted advisors — about such sensitive issues as the therapy he voluntarily undertook after the flight incident in an effort to better himself, ‘drug and alcohol testing’ he has allegedly undergone, his alleged ‘overuse or abuse of alcohol’ and other actions taken in the aftermath of the flight.”

In September 2016, reports emerged of Pitt being under investigation by the FBI and the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services for the in-flight altercation.

Two months later, the FBI confirmed to USA TODAY that the agency had reviewed the allegations and dropped its investigation, and the actor was not charged (he was also cleared of child abuse allegations by the LA County Department of Children and Family Services).

Angelina Jolie’s motion infringes on Brad Pitt’s privacy rights, lawyers say

Pitt’s attorneys claim the communications requested in Jolie’s motion would be a “serious intrusion into Pitt’s privacy rights” under the California constitution, which “protects non-conviction law enforcement records, medical records, drug testing and substance abuse treatment, Pitt’s married life and the termination thereof.”

The Oscar-winning actor’s motion also addresses Jolie’s issue with the NDA that halted the former couple’s Miraval negotiations. The agreement included a “commitment not to denigrate Miraval Provence and its direct and indirect shareholders, including (Pitt).” However, both Jolie and Pitt would have been free to make claims about each other in their legal proceedings, such as their divorce and child custody cases.

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Although Jolie later described the NDA as a “callous and mean-spirited demand” amid her divorce from Pitt, his team claims the actress’s information requests wouldn’t “discover relevant evidence” in explaining the NDA proposal but instead “embarrass Pitt.”

“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,” the filing reads.

Contributing: KiMi Robinson, USA TODAY