Nastiest divorce just got nastier
LONDON: Johnny Depp’s ugly battle with his ex-wife Amber Heard turned even uglier as she launched a $142m counterclaim against him ahead of a London High Court decision on Monday night.
Justice Andrew Nicol was due to hand down a ruling at 9pm on Monday (AEDT) in a landmark defamation case that Depp launched against The Sun newspaper for calling him a “wife beater”.
But no matter the result in that case, it’s far from the final curtain in Hollywood’s messiest and bitterest divorce.
Depp has already lodged a $71m lawsuit in the US against Heard for defamation over an article she wrote for The Washington Post.
And Heard, 34, is countersuing for $142m, claiming that Depp had organised a worldwide smear campaign against her through a string of fake social media accounts.
Heard’s counterclaim argues that Depp was trying to prejudice the defamation suit in the US.
“Not content to let the jury decide this lawsuit, Mr Depp and/or his agents acting on his behalf have orchestrated a false and defamatory smear campaign,” the counterclaim alleged, according to an article in the New York Post.
In London, Depp, 57, posed each day for a crowd of waiting photographers in more than three weeks of hearings in July.
The court heard detailed claims against him as The Sun
argued it could prove 14 incidents of domestic violence.
The allegations included that the Pirates of the Carib
bean star wrote “I love you” in blood with his severed finger on a mirror in a Gold Coast home owned by Mick Doohan.
The couple were living in Queensland while he was filming there in 2015, and it was around this time that their dogs Pistol and Boo garnered headlines across Australia.
The court also heard that Depp had sent his friend, fellow actor Paul Bettany a text that read: “Let’s drown her before we burn her. I will f. k her burnt corpse afterwards to make sure she’s dead.”
Heard also claimed that during her “three-day hostage situation” on the Gold Coast, Depp had ripped off her nightgown, leaving her naked as he touched her breast and “shoved her against the fridge”.
Depp, who also took the stand for several days where he said he was a “southern gentleman”, claimed that Heard was lying and that she had assaulted him and cut off the tip of his finger by throwing a vodka bottle at him.
Depp asserted that Heard was the aggressor in the relationship.
His lawyers argued that photographs of injuries that Heard claimed he inflicted were fake.
Heard, who was only a witness in the UK case, was in court almost every day.