Russian Businessman Wants Summons on Brad Pitt Lawsuit Quashed

Although Brad Pitt’s lawyers maintain that the actor’s complaint has been properly served on two Russian businessmen added as parties to his Chateau Miraval winery lawsuit that also names the actor’s ex- wife, Angelina Jolie, attorneys for one of the entrepreneurs and his company argue in new court papers that the 2022 service was defective.

In a sworn declaration previously filed by Pitt’s attorneys in Los Angeles Superior Court, process server Martyn Kemp says substituted service was performed on Russian businessman Yuri Shefler in London after three attempts on Aug. 23, 2022, when a security guard identified only as “Tai” accepted the legal documents on Shefler’s behalf.

“I asked Tai if Yuri Shefler would get them and Tai confirmed that he would make sure Mr. Shefler received them,” Kemp says.

But lawyers for Shefler and his Cyprus-based company, SPI Group Holding Ltd., filed court papers on Monday with Judge Lia Martin arguing that service was not done correctly and that their clients should not be parties in the case.

“Shefler is removed from the facts at issue by four degrees of separation,” Shefler’s lawyers argue in their court papers.

Service by Kemp was ineffective because Shefler does not live at the residence nor did he reside there at the time of the attempted service, Shefler’s lawyers argue in their court papers.

“Plaintiffs have been on notice for nearly a year that their service was ineffective, but have taken no steps to properly serve Shefler,” according to the court papers of Shefler’s lawyers, who also state that Shefler had no direct involvement in negotiating the acquisition of Jolie’s former company, Nouvel LLC, or in undertaking any of the actions that are alleged to form the basis for Pitt’s claims.

Jolie formed Nouvel as a vehicle for holding shares in Chateau Miraval, a French estate and winery. Before her alleged sale of Nouvel in 2021, Jolie was the sole member of the company and held 100% of its membership interest.

Pitt’s lawyers have not tried to serve SPI in Cyprus or anywhere else, according to the company’s attorneys’ court papers.

But according to Kemp, he also left copies of the lawsuit paperwork in a mailbox at the home and that he was informed by the “instructing solicitor” that the house was Shefler’s last known residence.

Five days earlier during the Kemp’s first visit, the home’s house manager initially said he would accept service on Shefler’s behalf, then changed his mind when Kemp asked if he could serve Shefler personally, Kemp says.

The next day, a different man at the home told Kemp that only Shefler’s wife and children lived there and that Shefler visited “only once a year at most,” Kemp says.

A different process server, Marco Breitenmoser, says in separate court papers filed by Pitt’s attorneys that Elena Oliynik, the wife of the other Russian businessman, longtime Shefler associate Alexey Oliynik, was presented with the lawsuit paperwork at a Geneva home on Aug. 25, 2022. The woman said she would scan the documents and send them to Oliynik, who was “away on a long trip,” according to Breitenmoser.

Hearings on the Shefler and SPI motions to quash are scheduled in March.

Pitt, 59, first sued the 48-year-old Jolie in February 2022, alleging she wrongfully sold her shares in the winery and estate to Shefler.

According to the lawsuit, the then-couple purchased a controlling interest in the southern France winery in 2008, envisioning the chateau “as a home to share with their children and the vineyard as a family business.” The couple were married at the estate in 2014.

“The vineyard became Pitt’s passion — and a profitable one, as Miraval, under Pitt’s stewardship, has grown into a multimillion-dollar international success story …,” the suit states.

Jolie sold her shares without telling Pitt, denying him the consent right she owed him, according to the complaint.

“She sold her interest with the knowledge and intention that Shefler and his affiliates would seek to control the business to which Pitt had devoted himself and to undermine Pitt’s investment in Miraval,” the suit states.

Nouvel filed $250 million countersuit against Pitt last Sept. 6, alleging that he was behind an effort to take control of Chateau Miraval.

“Ever since his former wife, Angelina Jolie, filed for divorce from him in 2016, Brad Pitt has been waging a vindictive war against her and Nouvel, her former investment company,” the countersuit states.

–City News Service