LoaderSave StorySave this storyCommentLoaderSave StorySave this storyThe 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.
Bojar says that when Danzeisen asked to use a restroom for one of his children, the first officer allegedly told him it would take about five minutes to clear the rear bathroom. (Danzeisen's lawsuit does not mention this.) In Bojar’s account, Danzeisen did not wait. She says he grew angry, demanded immediate access to the front bathroom, and, as she tried to move the bags, shoved her aside and threw multiple heavy cooler bags at her, striking her left ankle, foot, and leg and knocking her into the aircraft wall.
According to the counterclaim, Danzeisen then threw a grocery bag containing food and beverages, spilling food across the cabin, before shutting himself and one of his children inside the bathroom “as though nothing had happened.” Bojar alleges the captain was “visibly shocked,” exclaimed aloud in disbelief, and physically pulled the cooler bags off of Bojar while she was collapsed on the floor. According to her counterclaim, Peter Thiel observed Bojar on the floor in the immediate aftermath.
Bojar says an MRI later showed a torn tendon in her left ankle, which required surgery and ongoing treatment. She also alleges that the injury, along with psychological harm from the incident, temporarily left her unable to work as a flight attendant.
Danzeisen’s complaint gives a much less dramatic version. He says he was simply trying to “clear” “soft fabric” cooler bags, which he claims contained food, from the front bathroom so his child could use it. According to the complaint, the first officer and the family’s nanny were nearby and saw him hunched over on his knees, facing into the bathroom, moving the bags behind him.
The complaint accuses Bojar of fabricating her “grave injury,” characterizing the moment as so minor that no one realized a bag may have touched Bojar at all. Danzeisen alleges that Bojar later told another employee she hoped Thiel would see her limp. (She denies this in her counterclaim.)
Danzeisen’s complaint also argues that Bojar already treated the incident as a workplace injury by seeking and receiving workers’ compensation benefits and that workers’ compensation should therefore be her exclusive remedy. In other words, his lawsuit claims that she cannot take the benefits and then sue him and Thiel Capital separately over the same incident.
Michael Duff, who teaches torts and workers’ compensation and directs the Wefel Center for Employment Law at Saint Louis University School of Law, said after reviewing the filings that the argument likely turns on whether Danzeisen or Thiel Capital can be treated as Bojar’s employer. Workers’ compensation generally limits lawsuits against an employer, Duff said, but not necessarily against a third party.
The facts themselves, Duff said, were unusually strange even by law-school standards. “My students would think I’d gone too far if I offered up these facts even for an exam,” he said.
Bojar claims the incident followed a broader pattern of behavior aboard the family’s aircraft. She alleges that just weeks earlier, on June 27, 2024, Danzeisen berated her during another dispute over the forward bathroom being used for overflow storage, despite her efforts to coordinate with staff and private chefs to keep the problem from happening again.
Her counterclaim also describes a tense working environment around Danzeisen. Bojar says staff warned her that Danzeisen was “jealous” and advised her not to speak with Peter Thiel or interact with the couple’s children, even though that was difficult to avoid while working as a flight attendant. She says she was also warned by text when Danzeisen was in an “awful mood” or told to “beware of moods.” Bojar further alleges that at least two other flight attendants stopped working on the account after similar abuse, including one who she says was nearly struck with a fork.
