Actress Julia Ormond’s lawyers cite Ovitz’s Epstein emails in push for his arrest for contempt
The CAA co-founder swore he had "very limited interactions" with Jeffrey Epstein. His emails show planned visits in New York and St. Barts.
Law and Crime
Lawyers for actress Julia Ormond told a Manhattan judge that Michael Ovitz’s own emails to Jeffrey Epstein were inconsistent with the sworn account the talent agency co-founder gave of his ties to the sex offender, court documents show.
The argument was made in documents filed July 20 in which her lawyers asked New York Supreme Court Justice Adam Silvera to hold Ovitz in contempt and either order his arrest or set a strict deadline for him to comply, after he left a court-ordered deposition just 47 minutes into a scheduled three-hour session.
Ovitz, who is 79, co-founded Creative Artists Agency in 1974 and was its chairman until he resigned in August 1995. He is also known as a contemporary art collector and has appeared on ARTnews’ Top 200 Collectors, as mentioned in their June coverage of this dispute.
In 2023, Ormond sued Harvey Weinstein and CAA under New York’s Adult Survivors Act. She claims Weinstein sexually assaulted her in December 1995 and that CAA, her talent agency then, was negligent and failed to warn or protect her.
Silvera ordered Ovitz’s deposition in March after Ormond’s lawyers spent over a year trying to secure it. The court said Ovitz “may have knowledge of, among other things, CAA’s policies and practices regarding sexual misconduct affecting employees and clients and potential conversations about Weinstein’s sexual misconduct toward CAA’s clients,” according to the decision.
The deposition took place June 1 at Ovitz’s lawyers’ New York office on West 57th Street. Ovitz arrived over 20 minutes late, and the examination began at 9:21 a.m., the transcript shows.
When asked during the oath whether his testimony would be truthful, Ovitz first said “no” then “yes,” according to a video of the deposition cited in Ormond’s motion papers.
Paid subscribers can read the full documents.
Documents: Ovitz’s Epstein emails in the Ormond case
Records from New York Supreme Court
Adam Schrader
Ovitz testified that he and Weinstein “did not get along.” When asked why, he said, “Because he was a – I didn’t like his methodology of business. He was a bully and – and he and I got into it multiple times. I talked to him as little as possible.”
He also said that before he left CAA, he was never told about any allegations that Weinstein had sexual contact with a CAA client. Ovitz said that if a client had reported misconduct, he “would investigate it,” and if the claim was confirmed, “we surely wouldn’t have done business with the person.”
Ormond’s lawyer, Kevin Mintzer, asked, “So is it your testimony that you would not do business with someone who you were convinced had engaged in sexual misconduct?” Ovitz replied, “Yes.”
Mintzer then brought up Epstein, who was convicted of sex offenses in 2008. When asked if he was ever friendly with Epstein, Ovitz said no, then asked, “Well, what’s your definition of ‘friendly’?”
When asked if he had ever visited Epstein’s house, Ovitz said, “Once for 20 minutes at the recommendation of the JP Morgan Bank.”
Mintzer then asked if Ovitz had ever visited Epstein in St. Barts.
“What does this got to do with Harvey Weinstein?” Ovitz said. “I’m not going to discuss anything about Jeffrey Epstein. You can ask all the questions you want, you’re going to get no answers.”
When Mintzer started to ask another question about Epstein, Ovitz stood up and said, “I’m done with this. Okay? I did not come here --” then told the lawyer, “You are out of line. Thank you. I’ll see you later.”
“You couldn’t even find a proper address on me for a year,” Ovitz said as he left the room, the transcript shows. Mintzer stated on the record that he was “nowhere near done” with the examination.
The questions about Epstein came after the Justice Department released Epstein’s files. Mintzer wrote in a sworn statement that when Ormond subpoenaed Ovitz in November 2025, he had not seen any emails between Ovitz and Epstein. The Epstein Files Transparency Act was signed into law on November 19, 2025, and the department released the related materials after that.
Ormond’s lawyers found Ovitz’s personal email address and his email exchanges with Epstein in the released materials in April 2026, the affirmation states. They later used that email address to send him the subpoena after obtaining it from the released files.
The emails, which were filed as an exhibit and marked with the Bates prefix from the federal Epstein files release, show exchanges from 2012 and 2013, several years after Epstein’s conviction.
“I would love to see you,” Ovitz wrote to Epstein in April 2012, asking, “If I could come by for a drink, are you around?” Epstein replied with the address of his New York home, and Ovitz wrote that he would come by around 6:15.
In the same exchange, Ovitz wrote: “Btw, saw your friend. Larry Summers in PA, what a nice guy.”
In late December 2012, after Epstein wrote that “high winds” would delay his arrival in St. Barts until Monday and that he hoped to see Ovitz then, Ovitz replied: “Will be here. Looking forward to seeing you.”
In January 2013, Ovitz wrote to Epstein: “Standing with Sinofsky now and we both are raving about you,” adding, “And your outstanding multiple talents…”
In a June 24 affirmation supporting his own cross-motion, Ovitz gave a different account, according to excerpts quoted in Ormond’s opposition. He described his interactions with Epstein as “very limited,” wrote that “[w]e were not friends,” and said that while “perhaps Epstein wanted to try and create some relationship with me, . . . I was not interested and resisted.”
Ormond’s lawyers wrote that Ovitz “is content to offer a self-serving characterization of that relationship in an affirmation, where he cannot be cross-examined, while refusing to answer the same questions under oath, where he could be asked follow-up questions.”
“A witness should not be permitted to volunteer his own exculpatory account and then foreclose the questions that would test it,” the memorandum states.
Ovitz’s cross-motion asks the court to declare his deposition over, strike every Epstein question and answer from the record, and bar Ormond and her lawyers from publicly suggesting his refusal to answer was improper.
His lawyer, Jeffrey Mitchell of Ellis George, wrote that Mintzer “became hellbent creating a circus” and that “Epstein has nothing to do with this case.” The request for an arrest warrant, Mitchell wrote, “was almost certainly intended to draw media attention, which it did.”
Ormond’s lawyers responded that “Ovitz’s opposition concedes every fact necessary to hold him in contempt” — that he was ordered to appear and produce documents, produced nothing, and walked out. “An opposition that admits the disobedience and promises more of it does not refute a contempt motion,” they wrote.
Civil contempt is the court’s mechanism for punishing defiance of its orders. New York law permits confinement in some civil contempt proceedings until compliance. Ormond’s papers argue a warrant is necessary because Ovitz has sworn he “will not answer” the Epstein questions and that the court cannot “properly compel” him to.
Under New York’s deposition rules, a witness must answer every question except in three narrow situations — to protect a privilege, to enforce a limit a court has already set, or where a question is plainly improper and answering would cause significant prejudice. Even then, the rules let the questioning lawyer finish the deposition.
Ormond’s lawyers argue that none of those exceptions applied, and Ovitz’s own lawyer did not tell him not to answer. His counsel’s complaint on the record was about timing—that the Epstein questions should have come at the end.
Ovitz argues that the court only allowed three topics for his deposition. Ormond’s lawyers say this is not true: the March order granted her motion in full and said Ovitz may have knowledge of certain subjects “among other things.”
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Adam Schrader
Ovitz has told the court that he considers the matter closed. He wrote that his walkout was “perfectly appropriate under the circumstances” and that he “will be out of the country for the balance of the summer” and unavailable until September.
Ormond argues the questions tested Ovitz's testimony that he would not knowingly continue doing business with someone he believed had committed sexual misconduct.
In addition to seeking contempt and a warrant, Ormond is asking the court to order that the deposition continue under the supervision of a referee, a court-appointed officer who can rule on objections immediately, and to award her the legal fees she has spent on this dispute.
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