A French lighting designer, Odile Soudant, has sued Hollywood stars Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie for failing to credit her work on their chateau in Provence.
The stars have been ordered to pay their lighting designer 565,000 euros. Soudant decided to sue them after they allegedly failed to credit her on their residence and drove her company to financial ruin, reports theguardian.com.
Soudant claimed Pitt and Jolie hired her in 2010 to design lighting for four buildings in their estate.
Seventeen people laboured in the project, including “architects, designers, lighting and acoustic specialists, and even an optical engineer to calculate the angle of the sun’s rays on the chateu”.
It went on for several months before slowing down to a halt when the employees stopped receiving payment from the estranged pair.
“Odile, I need you. Come here please. I need you to finish,” Pitt reportedly wrote in an email.
A representative for Pitt said: “We respect the Court’s decision resolving this long running, standard dispute over payment of invoices. This narrow ruling does not address any copyright issues involving (lighting) designs developed by Brad and has no connection to Chateu Miraval.”
