Johnny Depp wants a retrial. The 57-year-old Pirates of the Caribbean actor has asked the Court of Appeal to order a retrial of his libel claim against The Sun over an article calling him a “wife-beater” amid ex Amber Heard‘s allegations, which a High Court judge found was “substantially true,” Daily Mail reported Thursday (December 24).
Johnny claims he “did not receive a fair trial” according to the report, and the judge’s ruling is “plainly wrong” and “manifestly unsafe,” via legal documents filed by his legal team with the Court of Appeal. His barrister David Sherborne has asked the Court of Appeal to “set aside the judgment and order a new trial,” arguing that the judge in the case “failed to examine the evidence and the arguments with the care that the parties were entitled to expect and which a proper resolution of the issues demanded.” He also said the judge’s findings were “bare assertions without any real explanation for how he reached these serious findings in the face of conflicting accounts of events.”
If you missed it, in November, The Pirates of the Caribbean actor lost in his case against News Group Newspapers, publishers of The Sun, and executive editor Dan Wootton after he was called a “wife-beater” in a 2018 article regarding ex Amber Heard‘s allegations, Variety reported Monday (November 2). Judge Andrew Nicol concluded in his ruling: “The claimant [Depp] has not succeeded in his action for libel. Although he has proved the necessary elements of his cause of action in libel, the defendants have shown that what they published in the meaning which I have held the words to bear was substantially true.”
“I have reached these conclusions having examined in detail the 14 incidents on which the defendants rely as well as the overarching considerations which the claimant submitted I should take into account.”