The sourest grapes
Brad Pitt notched a pair of legal victories in his fight for control over the French vineyard he formerly shared with Angelina Jolie.
Hollywood’s ultimate power couple already hashed out the terms of their divorce during an eight-year legal battle that ended in 2024, but the lawsuit that exposed the details of Angelina Jolie’s rocky marriage to Brad Pitt is just getting started.
At issue is the French estate and vineyard Château Miraval, purchased by Pitt and Jolie back in 2008 and the site of their 2014 wedding. After their 2016 split, Jolie sold her half of the rosé powerhouse in 2021 to Yuri Shefler, a Russian-born billionaire living in Switzerland.
Pitt, 62, sued Jolie accusing the actress of breaching contract by selling her half without his permission. Jolie, 51, hit back with a countersuit claiming she tried to sell her half to Pitt first, only for the A-list actor to demand she keep quiet about purported abuse as a condition of the deal.
The showdown isn’t set for trial until next year, but Pitt tallied a pair of legal victories this month that could help his case in the discovery phase. Shefler had convinced a Los Angeles trial judge that he wasn’t involved enough in the purchase to justify being dragged into the lawsuit. But a California appeals court disagreed last week, putting him back on the hook for interference with Pitt’s business. [Quinn Welsch]
“It defies credulity that Shefler, a sophisticated businessman, would risk almost $40 million on a transaction about which he knew nothing and with which he had no involvement,” Second Appellate District Associate Justice Gail Feuer wrote.
Earlier in June, Pitt also won a court order compelling Shefler’s business associate, Alexey Oliynik, to turn over relevant documents and sit for a deposition in London by Sept. 30. However, the court has yet to consider the core questions at the heart of the dispute.
When that time comes, Pitt may have a problem with his argument that Jolie’s sale to a Russia-linked spirits conglomerate damaged Miraval’s reputation.
After all, the explosive accusations unearthed during this legal battle — namely, that Pitt got physical with Jolie, choked one of his children, hit another and poured beer and wine on their kids during a flight from the French estate to LA in 2016 — might appear more damaging to Miraval’s reputation than doing business with an exiled Russian oligarch.
See what else fell under the lights this month:
Quick hits ⚡
Trans bans stand
The Supreme Court determined states’ anti-trans sports bans are constitutional, ruling 6-3 that the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment allows schools to provide separate men’s and women’s sports teams based on biological sex. [Kelsey Reichmann and Megan Butler]
Fatal fandom
A California woman who accidentally killed a man while filming OnlyFans fetish content was sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter. [Quinn Welsch]
Sharpshooter
Federal prosecutors charged 29-year-old NBA veteran Malik Beasley with taking bribes to rig his performance related to certain prop bets on scoring and rebounding, joining former Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier as the most accomplished players to be taken down by recent gambling probes. [Nina Pullano]
Locker room talk 🎤
“The Big 12 and its member institutions (apparently save TTU) have no interest in being required to endorse or even appearing to endorse unethical and indeed unlawful conduct that strikes at the heart of athletic integrity,” the conference wrote in a lawsuit against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who threatened the Big 12 if it sought to sanction Texas Tech for supporting quarterback Brendan Sorsby amid an NCAA-imposed gambling suspension that was later nullified by a local judge. [Kirk McDaniel]
After a wave of uproar over the ruling, Sorsby left college sports behind and applied for the NFL supplemental draft, only to be rejected by the league. Now his future is up in the air.
Leaderboard 🏆
Prosecutors rest in Karmelo Anthony murder trial after testimony on track meet stabbing 🥇 [David Lee]
Defense rests in Karmelo Anthony murder trial after student witness grilled over inconsistent statements 🥈 [David Lee]
Danny Masterson asks appeals court to overturn rape conviction 🥉 [Hillel Aron]
From the vault 🔒
When U.S. women’s soccer players brought a class action against the U.S. Soccer Federation over gender discrimination in 2019, the governing body insisted they should earn less money because their game requires less skill than the men’s game. Those claims drew heavy backlash, leading to the USSF president’s resignation and the federation’s retraction of that legal argument.
“USSF no longer disputes that the jobs of the WNT and MNT players require equal skill, effort, and responsibility — and therefore has necessarily conceded that they perform equal work,” the federation’s 2020 filing said. “USSF also does not dispute that the men’s and women’s teams perform their jobs under similar working conditions.”
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And for more background on the “Brangelina” drama: