Angelina Jolie faces loss in Brad Pitt winery lawsuit

Brad Pitt has secured a significant legal win in his long-running winery dispute with Angelina Jolie, with a California appeals court ruling in his favour on Wednesday, 24 June.

The California Court of Appeal overruled a lower court decision that had allowed Russian businessman Yuri Shefler to exit the lawsuit. 

According to court documents obtained by Us Weekly, Pitt had argued that when Jolie sold her shares in the Miraval winery to Tenute del Mondo, a subsidiary of the Stoli Group, in 2021, he became an "unwilling partner" of Shefler without his consent.

Shefler had previously sought to have himself removed from the case, arguing he had minimal involvement in the purchase negotiations and that Pitt had failed to show he had purposefully conducted business in California. 

A lower court accepted that argument, but the Court of Appeal disagreed, finding that the share purchase agreement was governed by California law and that Shefler's contacts with the state were sufficient to bring him within the court's jurisdiction. 

"It was these contacts by Shefler with California in purchasing a California company from a California resident that caused the injury to another California resident and California company that is the subject of the lawsuit," the ruling read. 

"On these facts, Shefler purposefully availed himself of the benefits of a California forum, and the controversy arose out of his contacts with the forum. We reverse." 

Pitt and his investment company Mondo Bongo are also entitled to recover costs from the appeal.

Jolie's attorney Paul Murphy moved quickly to contextualise the ruling.

"The ruling has no impact on the merits of the case, and certainly has no impact on Ms. Jolie's case," he said in a statement on Thursday. 

"At this point, Ms. Jolie is just looking forward to defeating the case at trial next year so that their family can finally focus their energies on healing and moving on."

The legal battle over the French winery began in 2022 when Pitt sued Jolie for allegedly selling her stake without his approval, which he claimed was required under an agreement between them. 

Jolie has disputed the existence of any such two-party consent arrangement and has alleged in a countersuit that Pitt refused to discuss a buyout unless she signed an NDA.

The winery dispute is just one thread in what has been a decade of legal and personal turbulence between the former couple, who were together for 12 years and married from 2014 to 2016. 

Their divorce was not finalised until December 2024.