The private jet Peter Thiel and his family were using had two bathrooms, but somehow, on July 13, 2024, neither was readily available. One in the back of the jet was stuffed with luggage. The other, according to one court filing, was being used to store cooler bags with food and kitchen equipment. What happened next has become the subject of a federal lawsuit featuring claims of an alleged assault as well as disputes over workers’ compensation and whether a confidentiality agreement can stop a former flight attendant from suing the husband of one of the planet’s richest people.
Stefanie Bojar, the flight attendant at the center of the dispute, was employed by Solairus Aviation—which did not immediately respond to a request for comment—but had worked more than 200 flights for Thiel and his husband, Matthew Danzeisen. On that July flight, Bojar says, Danzeisen—who is also the head of private investments at Thiel Capital—shoved her aside and threw multiple heavy cooler bags at her, knocking her into the aircraft wall and leaving her collapsed on the cabin floor. She claims that Danzeisen’s actions caused serious injuries to her ankle and knee.
Danzeisen says he was clearing bags from the bathroom so one of his children could use it. At most, he says, one of the bags may have accidentally brushed Bojar’s leg.
(Like the other claims in this story attributed to Bojar and Danzeisen, these were made in court filings.)
In May, Danzeisen preemptively sued Bojar in the Central District of California’s Southern Division—after, he says, she sent a “demand letter” several months earlier. While one of Bojar’s attorneys, Elliott Jung, tells WIRED the letter was an attempt to resolve the dispute outside courts, Danzeisen’s complaint describes Bojar as waging “a campaign to extort” him and his husband. Characterizing Bojar as a former flight attendant with a checkered aviation career, the complaint accuses her of launching a “defamation campaign” and violating a confidentiality agreement, and asks the court to essentially impose a gag order and award actual and punitive damages.
Bojar denied the allegations in a counterclaim filed Tuesday, adding Thiel Capital as a defendant and alleging battery, assault, emotional distress, and negligent supervision. Rejecting the characterization of her career as “checkered,” she alleges that Thiel Capital personnel helped coordinate the private aviation account on which she worked, knew or should have known about Danzeisen’s alleged conduct toward flight crew, and failed to intervene before or after the July 2024 incident.
In an interview, Bojar’s attorney called Danzeisen’s preemptive lawsuit a “bullying tactic” designed to intimidate a former flight attendant who had been injured on a plane.
“Just because you have wealth,” Jung said, “doesn’t mean that you have the right to just hurt people.”
“This is a shakedown about a bag that bumped into someone’s leg, and we do not pay out to shakedowns,” said Alex Spiro, an attorney for Danzeisen, in a statement. “So we will see everyone in court.”
According to both filings, the flight was scheduled to travel from Sun Valley, Idaho, to Washington, DC, on July 13, 2024, coincidently the same day Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. But the plane had a serious storage problem.
Bojar says a personal assistant of Thiel told the crew that the family’s luggage would arrive in two deliveries, disrupting the usual process of loading bags before passengers boarded. With no ground assistance, Bojar, the pilot, and the first officer had to load and organize the bags themselves.
By the time Thiel’s family boarded, Bojar says, the cabin was tightly packed. According to her filing, excess luggage blocked the rear bathroom, while the front bathroom was being used as overflow storage for cooler bags and kitchen equipment from a private chef.
