Johnny Depp loses bid to appeal 'wife beater' libel case

Warning: the following may be triggering for some readers as it discusses abuse, drug and alcohol addiction.

Johnny Depp has lost his latest attempt to overturn the ruling of his recent libel case against the publisher News Group Newspapers (which produces U.K. tabloid The Sun) and its executive editor, Dan Wootton. 

Depp was suing the publisher over an April 2018 article headlined “Gone Potty — How can JK Rowling be ‘genuinely happy’ casting wife beater Johnny Depp in the new Fantastic Beasts film?”

On Thursday, London’s Court of Appeal refused to give Depp permission to challenge a verdict last year that concluded the actor was “a wife beater,” which means Depp's lawyer will now focus on a U.S. case brought against Depp's ex-wife Amber Heard. 

“As we have said, it is not easy to persuade this court to overturn the findings of a trial judge on purely factual questions,” the two Court of Appeal judges said in their judgment, according to the full judgement docs. “We do not believe that there is a real prospect of it being prepared to do so in this case," the judges added.

Following a three-week trial in July last year, Justice Nichol dismissed the Pirates of the Caribbean actor’s claim against The Sun. The judge ruled that Depp assaulted Heard and put her in “fear for her life” three times.

He asked the Court of Appeal to grant permission for him to challenge the ruling, with the hopes of a retrial and having its findings overturned, but that has been denied.

As soon as the news spread that Depp lost the bid to overturn the findings, #JusticeForJohnny began to trend on Twitter.

Depp's lawyers have previously said that Nicol's ruling was "plainly wrong" and asked to share new evidence which they said showed Heard's claim that she donated her divorce settlement to charity was "a calculated and manipulative lie." In August 2016, Heard said she donated her entire $7 million divorce settlement payment to two charities, American Civil Liberties Union to prevent violence against women, and the other half to the Children's Hospital of Los Angeles.

“Had the truth about the charity claim emerged at the trial, it would have materially affected the judge’s consideration of Ms. Heard’s evidence as a whole,” Depp's lawyer, Andrew Caldecott, said.

The Court of Appeal said the hearings from last summer were fair, and there had been "no error of law."

Heard told the court that Depp would turn into his jealous alter ego, "the monster," after consuming alcohol and drugs and had threatened to kill her. She shared details of 14 different occasions where she accused her ex-husband of punching her, choking her and head butting her, among other physical acts. The judge had accepted 12 of the accounts to be true.

“We are pleased – but by no means surprised – by the court’s denial of Mr. Depp’s application for appeal,” a spokeswoman for Heard said, adding that her evidence was “overwhelming and undeniable.”

“Mr. Depp’s claim of new and important evidence was nothing more than a press strategy, and has been soundly rejected by the court," the spokeswoman added.

Depp has filed a $50 million defamation lawsuit against Heard in a Virginia court over a piece she wrote for the Washington Post about domestic abuse.

The complaint said that, although Depp was not named in the Post article, it was clear Heard was talking about him. The lawsuit called her ongoing allegations of domestic abuse “categorically and demonstrably false.”

“They were part of an elaborate hoax to generate positive publicity for Ms. Heard and advance her career,” the lawsuit said, claiming: “She is the perpetrator.”

The suit said Depp has suffered financial losses because of the accusations, including being dropped from his role as Capt. Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean films.

In her article, published in December 2018, Heard said she also lost an acting role and a contract with a major fashion brand because she went public with her claims of abuse.

“I spoke up against sexual violence — and faced our culture’s wrath,” Heard wrote, adding that she felt as though she was “on trial in the court of public opinion.”

Following the Court of Appeal's decision on Thursday, Depp's British lawyer Joelle Rich released a statement. “The evidence presented at last week’s hearing further demonstrates that there are clear and objective reasons to seriously question the decision reached in the UK court,” Rich said. “Mr Depp looks forward to presenting the complete, irrefutable evidence of the truth in the U.S. libel case against Ms Heard where she will have to provide full disclosure.”

The $50 million libel case was recently delayed until April 2022.

BEFORE YOU GO: Britney Spears moves to make Jodi Montgomery her permanent conservator

[video_embed id='2167768']BEFORE YOU GO: Britney Spears moves to make Jodi Montgomery her permanent conservator[/video_embed]