About a year and a half ago, we started hearing a lot about Brad Pitt’s old charity, Make It Right NOLA. And yes, it was HIS charity. He started it, he held fundraisers for it, it was his brainchild and he couldn’t take enough credit for it (see also: this old Architectural Digest cover). The idea was to bring the best architects together to create low-income, energy-efficient, eco-friendly homes in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward, one of the areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Dozens of homes were built. Few of them are still standing today – they were made with shoddy materials, and many have been taken down by the city because they were giant health risks and utterly unlivable. As it turns out, MIR NOLA has been financially insolvent for a while and they basically left zero support for all of the homeowners, many of whom are still on the hook for home loans and mortgage payments, even though their homes are unlivable cesspools of mold and water damage.

The home owners filed a class action suit against Brad and the MIR team last year. Brad’s been trying to get off the lawsuit for much of the past year, trying to claim that he barely had anything to do with MIR (except he founded it, etc). Last week, a judge said Brad will remain a defendant in the lawsuit:

Brad Pitt will remain a defendant in the lawsuit that claims his charitable foundation Make It Right built inadequate housing for Hurricane Katrina victims. The Times-Picayune reports that Civil District Court Judge Rachael Johnson ruled that Pitt would remain a defendant in a September 2018 lawsuit — in which Pitt and his foundation were sued by homeowners who claimed the homes Make It Right built for them were seriously faulty and deteriorating at a rapid pace — in a decision made last week.

In doing so, Johnson denied Pitt’s November 2018 request to dismiss him from the lawsuit, in which he claimed he had no personal involvement, instead suing the executive architect of the houses, John Williams, on behalf of Make It Right. At that time, Pitt argued that the claims made against him personally should be dismissed because he “does not owe a duty to third parties,” according to court documents obtained by The Blast.

His attorney argued the residents have not provided any facts “that support a conclusion that Mr. Pitt owed some personal duty to plaintiffs,” according to the motion. The documents also argued the residents didn’t provide “factual allegations” that the War Machine actor had a hand in any “wrongful conduct” toward the homeowners either through direct actions or communications.

Pitt’s attorney maintained that the plaintiffs’ claims of “negligent infliction of emotional distress” can’t be brought up unless they suffered physical injuries, which they have not, according to the court documents. The plaintiffs’ lawyer, Ron Austin, did not respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment at the time.

[From People]

I realize that Brad is not responsible for everything that went down, but for Pitt to argue that he had nothing to do with anything and that he made zero promises to these people AND that they’re only fake-suffering… well, it feels especially cruel to the victims of this scheme. To be clear, I don’t think Brad and his team (and yes, they were HIS team) set out to hurt people. There was no malice there. Brad just half-assed it, and the people around him half-assed it and now that dozens of people are tens of thousands of dollars in debt and basically homeless, Brad is half-assing his defense too. It’s like he’s hoping his white-dude privilege will help everyone forget that his boredom is no excuse for negligence.

Photos courtesy of WENN, cover courtesy of Architectural Digest.