Tuesday was the final day of arguments in Johnny Depp’s libel lawsuit against News Group Newspapers, the publisher of British tabloid The Sun, and the paper’s executive editor, Dan Wootton. Over the course of 16 days, spread across three weeks, Depp and his legal team argued that a 2018 headline in which the paper referred to him as a “wife beater” was false and damaging. The Sun’s defense was that there was enough evidence to support the label. Its case relied on 14 alleged incidents described by his ex-wife, Amber Heard, who testified on The Sun’s behalf.
Depp denies all of them.
Now, we wait for a verdict. Unlike in U.S. libel cases, in the U.K. the burden of proof is on the defense. The case will be decided by judge Andrew Nicol, who has many days full of multiple witness testimony to consider. It could be a while. In the meantime, a brief primer on what the case has shown us so far.
The pair met on the set of The Rum Diary in 2011. They were married in 2015 and Heard filed for divorce about a year later. She also filed for a restraining order shortly after, but eventually withdrew it, and by the end of the contentious divorce, after the couple settled for $7 million, they released a joint statement in which Heard took back accusations of physical harm and he took back accusations that she was lying for profit.
“Our relationship was intensely passionate and at times volatile, but always bound by love,” it read. “Neither party has made false accusations for financial gain. There was never an intent of physical or emotional harm.”
But that was not that. Along with this case in the High Court in London, Depp is suing Heard in Virginia for an op-ed published in the Washington Post in 2018 in which she, without naming names, cast herself as a victim of domestic abuse. (Depp alleges, and the judge in that case agreed, that it was a not-so-thinly veiled reference to him. Depp denies all allegations of domestic abuse.) The U.S. trial has no court date yet.
The London courts, however, moved forward with the case this summer. Almost every day, Depp and Heard arrived in person separately and with entourages, taking a moment to pull down their bandanas, donned for pandemic protection, and wave at crowds gathered.
Depp’s legal team, with efforts from barristers David Sherborne and Eleanor Laws, sought to cast doubt over the 14 incidents of abuse that Heard detailed for The Sun’s defense. In an opening statement, Sherborne claimed vindication, not money, was the star’s objective. He might get the justice he was looking for, but he had to expose himself in the process. There were audio recordings of unpleasant exchanges, images of bloody fingers entered into evidence, and one photo of Depp passed out with a tub of ice cream in his lap. In a world where stars have more and more control over the access tap, why would anyone open the fire hose?
Sherborne asked this rhetorical question himself in his closing argument Tuesday as well. Depp was “subjecting himself to this painful, public process. Why else would Mr. Depp, this private man as he explained, expose all the most intimate details of his private life?”
The Sun’s team, led by Sasha Wass, painted Depp as a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, whose worst qualities came out when he was not sober, which, they argued, was often. Wass referred to this version of Depp as the “monster,” borrowing a descriptor that both Depp and Heard used in texts and emails to describe a version of him. Depp has denied all accusations of physical violence, though he admitted to one accidental headbutt.