Johnny Depp has lost the case against the Sun: for the judges "it is not defamation to call him a 'wife beater'"
Johnny Depp lost the case against The Sun newspaper. The London court was peremptory: calling Depp a "wife beater" is not defamation. The trial lasted three months and ended, with no holds barred in the private lives of Depp and his ex-wife Amber Heard, last July. After four months, the London high court ruling rejected the Pirates of the Caribbean star's claim for compensation. One of the sentences indicted in the lawsuit filed in 2018 concerned, among other things, a statement relating to the writer J.K. Rowling.
"How can Rowling be" genuinely happy "for casting wife-beating Johnny Depp for the new Fantastic Beasts movie? The Sun, in short, reported in its article that 57-year-old Depp had been violent towards his 34-year-old ex-wife on at least one occasion during their relationship. Judge Justice (!) Nicol filed the sentence where he wrote that the defendants (the Sun and its editor News Group Newspapers) "showed that what they published in the offending report and the words used were attributable to substantially true facts" .
So if on the one hand the publishing group of the best-selling and best-known Anglo-Saxon tabloid defended itself by winning the case, it has at the same time placed a big brick in favor of a hypothetical defense of Heard from Depp's violence when the time comes for other proceedings. legal proceedings relating to the couple. In the concluding statements, among other things, the magistrate acknowledged that the accusations brought by Heard against Depp "had a negative effect on her acting career". Nothing to do also for the judgment given by Depp to his ex ("gold digger", in the sense that she was trying to get her husband's money in any way): "I recognize that there were also other elements in the divorce agreement, but her donation of $ 7 million to charity is certainly not the deed one would expect from a gold researcher. " Finally, here are the words of the publishing house owned by Rupert Murdoch: “The Sun has been fighting for victims of domestic abuse for over 20 years. Victims of domestic abuse must never be silenced, we thank the judge for his careful consideration and we thank Amber Heard for her courage in testifying in court ”. However, Depp's lawyers have announced an appeal against a "perverse and disconcerting decision".
