Johnny Depp’s legal team is asking the UK Court of Appeal for a retrial in his libel case against with The Sun. Central to their argument is the claim that ex-wife Amber Heard did not donate all of her $7 million divorce settlement to charity as she said she would.
Depp’s team sued The Sun for labeling him a “wife beater,” a suit he lost in July. High Court Justice Andrew Nicol ruled that the Sun’s team essentially proved the claims in the 2018 article were “substantially true,” and that the 57-year-old had in fact assaulted her on a dozen occasions.
On Thursday, Depp’s team said that the false donation claims gave Heard a “considerable boost to her credibility as a person” and that they had “tipped the scales against Mr. Depp from the very beginning.”
Lawyer Andrew Caldecott dubbed her claims “calculated and manipulative lie” in written submissions to the judge.
“It’s a false plus to her and a false minus to him,” he said Thursday.
During the trial, Depp and Heard both accused the other of abuse. Depp and Heard will learn soon if his appeal is a go. “We are not going to reach an immediate decision today but we will make it very shortly and it will be handed down in writing,” declared Lord Justice Underhill of the UK Court of Appeal at the end of a three-hour process.