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John Travolta Must Face Alleged Ex-Lover's Lawsuit

John Travolta. Photo: Getty

A judge ruled on Tuesday that John Travolta cannot block his former pilot’s lawsuit to talk about their relationship during the 1980’s.

A former employee of Travolta's airline company, Alto, Douglas Gotterba, worked as a pilot for the actor throughout the 1980s before he reached a written termination agreement with the business in 1987. According to press interviews he's given, Gotterba claims that his nearly six-year working relationship with Travolta extended beyond a professional sense.

Nearly 25 years later, Gotterba has decided to “tell the story of his life and those involved in it.” According to the former pilot, he was "unwillingly thrust" into the gossip tabloids by public revelations from another former Travolta employee.

After Gotterba gave an interview to The National Enquirer and announced plans to release a book, Travolta’s attorney, Martin Singer, sent the pilot cease-and-desist letters claiming Gotterba was breaching a confidentiality provision in his original termination agreement.

According to Gotterba and his lawyer, however, the documents are inauthentic, saying the paperwork in question was an early draft of the agreement. Gotterba sued Travolta and Alto, seeking a judge’s opinion about which agreement was valid and whether or not confidentiality was really enforceable.

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However, a special California law created to protect US citizens' First Amendment rights continued the legal back and forth—Alto responded with an anti-SLAPP motion asserting Travolta’s right to petition and further questioned whether or not Gotteba’s lawsuit was based upon the cease-and-desist letters alone, or the larger confidentiality disagreement. On Tuesday, California appeals court Presiding Justice Arthur Gilbert ruled in Gotteba’s favor, stating that the lawsuit was based on “the validity of the asserted termination agreements.” According to court documents, Gilbert added, “Although the prelitigation letters may have triggered Gotterba’s complaint and may be evidence in support of the complaint, they are not the basis of the complaint.”

Gilbert concluded that if Travolta had won, the decision “would lead to the absurd result that a person receiving a demand letter threatening legal action for breach of contract would be precluded from seeking declaratory relief to determine the validity of the contract. Declaratory relief would be limited to situations where the parties have not communicated their disagreement.”

Since then, Travolta's attorney has released the following statement to The Hollywood Reporter:

"While we believe the Court should have thrown out Gotterba’s lawsuit at the outset, ultimately, he will not prevail on his claim," the statement read.

"Gotterba points to an unsigned draft agreement, which he now claims is the controlling document in the case, yet he attached as an exhibit to his own complaint the final version of the contract that he signed barring his claim. We are very confident that in the end we will prevail in the action.“

More to come...