Actor Johnny Depp sues his lawyer over mismanagement
The American film star Johnny Depp has added his longtime entertainment lawyer to the list of people he says are to blame for his vanished fortune and wants US$30 million in contingency fees paid over the past 18 years returned. The star of Walt Disney’s
Pirates of the Caribbean franchise – which has garnered about US$4.5 billion in box-office sales globally – sued Jacob Bloom last week for malpractice, among other claims.
Depp says the lawyer was in cahoots with his former business managers at the Management Group, who the actor is already suing for allegedly mismanaging hundreds of millions of dollars he made.
The legal fallout between Depp, 54, and his former advisers has provided a rare glimpse into dealings between megastars and the people they entrust with running their business and private life.
The actor claims Mr Bloom helped to arrange a predatory, “hard money” loan that has been sucking up his residuals from six movies while his business manager and lawyer were still getting their cut from his share of the movies.
Mr Bloom and the Management Group “structured the loan, without the legally required disclosures to Mr Depp, as a vehicle to provide themselves with immediate priority to millions of dollars of voidable contingency fees tied to the success of Mr Depp’s film residuals”, all before Depp received a cent, according to the complaint filed in
Los Angeles.
After Depp sued his former business managers in January for mismanagement and negligence, the Beverly Hillsbased Management fired back, claiming the actor repeatedly ignored their advice that his $2m a month lifestyle, including $30,000 just for wine, was not sustainable.
Depp’s over-the-top outlays have included a 45-acre chateau in the south of France, a chain of islands in the Bahamas, a 46-metre luxury yacht, art works by Andy Warhol and Gustav Klimt, 70 collectible guitars, 40 full-time employees around the world and a specially made cannon that he used to blast the ashes of Hunter Thompson over Aspen, Colorado, according to his former business managers.
Mr Bloom did not immediately return a call for comment.
Meanwhile, in New York, the foreclosure auction for a penthouse linked to the millionaire Kolawole Akanni Aluko at Manhattan’s ultra-luxury One57 tower is back on.
Unit 79 at the Billionaires’ Row skyscraper, purchased in 2014 for $50.9m, is set to be sold at auction on November 8, according to Mark McKew, the New York lawyer appointed to handle the sale. The owners are shell companies linked to Mr Aluko, a Nigerian businessman accused by the United States of receiving contracts with his country’s state-owned oil company after bribing a government official. An auction scheduled for July was delayed after a creditor claimed Mr Aluko owed it about $83m for petrol and jet fuel.
Foreclosure proceedings were started in January on Mr Aluko’s apartment, which would be the costliest residential seizure in New York City’s history.
The actor claims his lawyer helped to arrange a ‘hard money’ loan that sucked up his income from movies