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Julia Ormond’s lawyers are looking forward to the court issuing an injunction to arrest CAA co-founder Michael Ovitz for withdrawing from a deposition after urging his connection to Jeffrey Epstein.
Ovitz was asked about his continued association with Epstein after the disgraced financier was convicted of sex crimes. At some point, Ovitz stopped participating. “I will not discuss anything about Jeffrey Epstein,” he said. “You can ask all the questions you want, you won’t get answers.”
The line of questioning concerned Ovitz’s assertion that he would have cut ties with Weinstein had he known about the former movie mogul’s history of sexual misconduct. Ormond, who rose to fame in the 1990s after playing the title role Legends of the Fall, The First Knight and SabrinaShe claims in a lawsuit filed in 2023 that senior officials at CAA turned a blind eye to Weinstein’s crimes and failed to warn her about him before the 1995 meeting that led to her assault. Ovitz was president of CAA in the period immediately preceding the alleged incident.
In his testimony, Ovitz said he would have investigated any allegation of sexual misconduct by Weinstein against one of his clients. When asked what he would have done if the allegation had been proven, Ovitz responded that the CAA “certainly would not have dealt with it.”
“I didn’t like his approach to work,” Ovitz added. “He was a bully and – we ran into it a few times. I talked to him as little as possible.”
Ormond’s lawyers then turned to Ovitz’s relationship with Epstein. Tensions erupted when Ovitz was questioned about whether he was continuing his relationship with the disgraced financier after learning Epstein had been convicted of sex crimes. He stood up from his chair, pointed to Ormond’s lawyer, and said, “I’m done with this. Okay?” “You are out of line,” he asserted.
Ormond’s legal team says the walkout was the culmination of a pattern of contempt of court proceedings that had persisted for months and not an isolated incident, citing Ovitz’s ignoring of a subpoena and failure to appear to testify in November. They are asking the court to issue an arrest warrant for him so he can appear for another statement and turn over documents related to his communications with Weinstein.
The CAA confirmed that the case does not involve Ovitz, whose legal fees are paid by the agency.
The friendly connections between Ovitz and Epstein came to light earlier this year when the Justice Department released a trove of materials about the disgraced financier. Emails from 2012 showed the couple planned to meet at Epstein’s home in Manhattan and off the coast of St. Barts.
