PARIS: A French appeal court has ordered US stars Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie to pay €568,000 ($667,000) to a lighting designer they employed for their chateau in southern France, judicial sources said Friday.
The court ruled on April 19 in favor of Odile Soudant, whose company went bankrupt, in the dispute with Chateau Miraval, the firm that manages the sprawling 17th-century property.
Pitt and Jolie — now separated — bought the property in the southern Provence region in 2008 and the actors got married in its chapel in 2014.
The multimillion-dollar project to illuminate the 40-room chateau and three outbuildings involved as many as 17 fulltime workers at one point but was not covered by a contract, according to the French newspaper Liberation.
The renovation of the chateau ran smoothly for two years, by which time it ran up €25 million in costs, Liberation reported, before technical problems and delays began cropping up, culminating in a billing dispute that brought payments to a halt.
The appeal court ruled that the delays were not Soudant’s fault.
Pitt, 53, and Jolie, 42, have been ordered to pay nearly 450,000 euros to the administrator of Soudant”s company Lumieres Studio to pay unpaid bills and compensate for harm to its reputation, the sources said.
A spokesperson for Pitt told AFP: “We respect the court”s decision resolving this long-running, standard dispute regarding commercial issues and payment of invoices.”
The Hollywood A-listers known jointly as Brangelina, who have six children, do not intend to sell the chateau despite their impending divorce, Charles Perrin told AFP in March.
“It”s an investment for their family and their children,” he said.
Brad Pitt must pay $667,000 to French chateau decorator
Updated 19 August 2017