Johnny Depp loses UK libel case over 'wife-beater' article

UK court ruled against Hollywood actor Johnny Depp today in his libel suit against the owner of The Sun tabloid over allegations that he was a “wife-beater.”

In a ruling Monday, Justice Andrew Nicol said Depp has “not succeeded in his action for libel.” The judgement however added that the actor had “proved the necessary elements of his cause of action in libel,” the defendants had shown that “what they published in the meaning which I have held the words to bear was substantially true.”

Johnny Depp had sued News Group Newspapers, publisher of The Sun, and the newspaper’s executive editor, Dan Wootton, over an April 2018 article that accused him of assaulting his wife Amber Heard.

Meanwhile, his estranged wife Amber Heard’s US counsel, Elaine Charlson Bredehoft, said in a statement that the verdict is “not a surprise” and added, “very soon, we will be presenting even more voluminous evidence in the U.S.”

Johnny Depp is also suing Amber Heard for $50 million in Virginia over a Washington Post story about domestic violence. The trial is due to be held next year.

The estranged couple had met on the set of the 2011 comedy film ‘The Rum Diary’ and married in Los Angeles in 2015. They separated the following year and divorced in 2017. They had both accused each other of domestic abuse and violence during their married year. Amber Heard had claimed that Johnny Depp turned into a violent alter ego when under the influence of alcohol and drugs. 

While Johnny Depp called the allegations “sick” and a “hoax” and claimed Heard was the aggressor during their relationship. He claimed that Heard hit him, even severing the tip of his finger with a thrown vodka bottle during an altercation in Australia during the filming of a ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ movie.