A Los Angeles federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by the stunt double of Angelina Jolie against Rupert Murdoch’s media company for allegedly using private investigators to hack into her voice-mail, court papers obtained on May 22 show.
Eunice Huthart, of Liverpool, England, filed suit last June against News Corp., subsidiaries and unidentified individuals for alleged violations of federal wiretap and stored communications laws and invasion of privacy. Murdoch was not named as a defendant.
In granting the defense’s dismissal motion on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald indicated that the suit belongs in the British courts with other cases related to the phone-hacking scandal that resulted in the July 2011 closure of Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid.
The complaint alleged that a private investigator known to have intercepted voice-mail messages for Murdoch tabloids The Sun and the News of the World hacked Huthart’s phone in 2004 and 2005 to get stories about Jolie’s relationship with Brad Pitt.
At the time, Huthart was working in Los Angeles on the film Mr. & Mrs. Smith as Jolie’s stunt double, according to the suit.
Huthart alleges that her voice-mail was hacked for at least three Jolie-Pitt stories, including an April 2005 article in The Sun that said Pitt, who was then married to actress Jennifer Aniston, and his Mr. & Mrs. Smith co- star were having an affair at a time when the news was not public knowledge.
The lawsuit was the first known U.S. suit involving the British phone hacking scandal.
