Hollywood star Johnny Depp asked permission on Thursday to appeal his loss in a defamation case in London last year over a tabloid article that called him a wife-beater.High Court Judge Andrew Nicol ruled last November saying that Depp violently assaulted ex-wife Amber Heard during their tumultuous five-year relationship, causing her to fear for her life at times.The move came after three weeks of hearings in which the court heard a sensational claim and counterclaim from Depp, 57, and Heard, 34, over violent explosions each accused of committing.
Depp, a star of films including Pirates of the Caribbean and Edward Scissorhands, had gone to court in London to sue The Sun newspaper and one of its reporters over an article claiming he had been violent towards Heard.”We have found that the majority of alleged assaults on Ms. Heard by Mr. Depp have been proven in civilian life,” Nicol said in his November ruling. During the libel lawsuit, Amber Heard said Johnny Depp would become “the monster” after using drugs and alcohol.
In the aftermath of that ruling, Depp’s lawyers said the ruling was flawed a lot and it would be ridiculous for him not to appeal. They said it was “disturbing” that the judge relied on Heard’s testimony while rejecting testimony from the police, his former assistant and other witnesses who they said had undermined his testimony.
On Thursday, Depp’s legal team will seek to leave an appeal and to rely on additional evidence. The court hearing, which is expected to last around two hours, will be televised live on the Court of Appeal’s YouTube channel. Following Nicol’s verdict, considered highly damaging to his career, Depp was asked to leave the Fantastic Beasts franchise, the film spin-offs of the Harry Potter books and films.
During last summer’s libel suit, Heard said Depp would turn into a jealous alter ego, “the monster,” after drinking drugs and alcohol and often threatening to kill her. She described in detail 14 occasions of extreme violence when she said the actor choked, punched, slapped, cut her on the head, strangled, and punched her, Nicol accepting that 12 of those accounts were true, including one assault after her 30th birthday and another incident that left her black-eyed.
The couple met in the making ‘The Rum Diary’ in 2011 to be, later on, the but marriage didn’t last long breaking in 2016. Depp had told the court he had never been violent towards his ex-wife, claiming his allegations were a hoax and portrayed her as a gold digger. But Nicol rejected his version of events.
Depp also filed a $ 50 million libel claim against Heard in a Virginia court for ‘an opinion piece’ she wrote in the Washington Post accusing her of defaming him.
