Johnny Depp lawyers say Amber Heard lied about giving £5.5m divorce settlement to charity

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Amber Heard‘s claim that she gave her £5.5million ($7million) divorce settlement from Johnny Depp to charity was a ‘calculated and manipulative lie’ and the donations may have been as little as £800,000 ($1.1million), the Pirates of the Caribbean star’s lawyers told the Court of Appeal today.

The Hollywood actor, 57, is trying to overturn a damning High Court ruling that he assaulted his ex-wife, 34, and put her in fear for her life, and is asking the Court of Appeal to order a retrial of his libel claim against The Sun after he was called a ‘wife-beater’.

His barrister Andrew Caldecott QC’s demand for a re-trial centres on an application for permission to rely on ‘fresh evidence’ that Ms Heard did not donate her entire divorce settlement to charity, claiming it was ‘a fraction’ of what she said.

He also claimed that judge in last year’s three-week trial had a ‘very favourable starting point of Ms Heard’ and unfairly rejected ‘evidence adverse’ to her.

After the couple divorced in 2016, Ms Heard said she would split the £5.5million ($7million) between the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).  But Mr Caldecott told the court Ms Heard gave just $100,000 to the hospital and $450,000 to the ACLU, although she claims she made a further $500,000 donation to the second charity anonymously.

The QC said that the claims had given Ms Heard ‘a considerable boost to her credibility as a person’ and had ‘tipped the scales against Mr Depp from the very beginning’ and that last year’s ruling was ‘deeply flawed’.

Following a three-week trial in July 2020, Mr Justice Nicol ruled that Mr Depp, 57, assaulted Ms Heard, 34, on a dozen occasions and put her in ‘fear for her life’ three times.

The judge found that an April 2018 column calling Mr Depp a ‘wife beater’ was ‘substantially true’.  He said ‘a recurring theme in Mr Depp’s evidence was that Ms Heard had constructed a hoax and that she had done this as an ‘insurance policy’, and that Ms Heard was a ‘gold-digger’. But he added: ‘I do not accept this characterisation of Ms Heard.’

Today the actor’s legal team was back in court to claim the star ‘did not receive a fair trial’ and is applying for permission to appeal against the ruling at the Royal Courts of Justice in London on Thursday. Neither Mr Depp nor Ms Heard are present in court.

As Mr Depp’s lawyers fought for a second trial of the century, the court heard: 

• Amber Heard is accused of donating a seventh of the $7million divorce payout she received from Johnny Depp, despite saying she gave away all of it;
• Star’s lawyers also claim last year’s judgment against him was ‘flawed’ because it failed to take into account audio of Ms Heard saying: ‘I can’t promise I won’t get physical again’. 
• Actor’s QC Andrew Caldecott also claims judge failed to give weight to Depp’s recorded claims to his ex-wife: ‘You f****** haymakered me’;
• He said the judge had ‘glibly’ accepted Ms Heard’s evidence without ‘proper forensic examination’ of its truthfulness
• Sasha Wass QC, representing The Sun’s publisher News Group Newspapers (NGN), said Mr Depp’s complaint was that the trial judge was ‘favourable’ to Ms Heard’s evidence but ‘unfavourable’ to the actor’s. She said: ‘The judge did find that, on multiple occasions, that Mr Depp had lied’;

He said Ms Heard was ‘the key witness’ at the libel trial, adding: ‘They (NGN) would have had no defence without Ms Heard. There were many other witnesses, but she was on any view centre stage.’

He added that Ms Heard’s witness statement said that ‘the entire amount of my divorce settlement was donated to charity’.

Mr Caldecott said that statement ‘means what it says … ‘I have not kept a cent’ and that was clearly how the judge understood it’.

The barrister said: ‘There were two charities that received money from Ms Heard: the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles and the American Civil Liberties Union. On August 18 2016, Ms Heard publicly stated that the seven million dollars would be equally divided between them.’

But Mr Caldecott said that ‘the only donation’ to the hospital that has been made is one of ‘100,000 dollars, not the 3.5 million dollars which we say the court was led to believe was the true position’. 

Mr Caldecott said, the hospital wrote to Mr Depp’s business adviser in 2019 to say Ms Heard had not made ‘any payments’.

In written submissions, Mr Caldecott said the pledges ‘strengthened Ms Heard’s credit in an exceptional way’.

But, he added, that was a ‘calculated and manipulative lie, designed to achieve a potent favourable impression from the outset’.

Amber Heard was never asked whether or not she had donated all of her divorce settlement during last summer’s libel trial, the Court of Appeal heard.

Lord Justice Underhill said: ‘We now know what the truthful answer would have been, but (Ms Heard) was never given the opportunity to say ‘I have paid a comparatively small sum but I’ve made a pledge to both (charities) and I will be paying over X number of years’.’

Mr Caldecott said it was a ‘perfectly reasonable decision by an advocate not to challenge a clear statement that she had donated it all’.

He argued that Ms Heard had been unequivocal in her claims that the entirety of the seven million dollars she received from Mr Depp had already been donated.

In November, Mr Justice Nicol rejected Mr Depp’s contention that Ms Heard was a ‘gold-digger’, saying in his ruling: ‘Her donation of the seven million US dollars to charity is hardly the act one would expect of a gold-digger.’

Mr Caldecott argued that the if ‘the truth about the charity claim emerged at the trial, it would have materially affected Mr Justice Nicol’s consideration of Ms Heard’s evidence as a whole’.

He said: ‘The evidence presented a wholly exceptional act of philanthropy, which would have deeply impressed any reasonable person.

‘Her public statements expressly stated that the ACLU donation had victims of domestic violence specifically in mind.

‘The subliminal message of the charity claim was in any event clear: Ms Heard would not wish to keep any of Mr Depp’s money, because he had subjected her to serious violence. The evidence presented, and was obviously intended to present, her in the strongest terms as both virtuous and a victim.’

Andrew Caldecott said the trial judge last year, Mr Justice Nicol, had a ‘very favourable starting point of Ms Heard’ and unfairly rejected ‘evidence adverse’ to her.

He told the court: ‘If you look at the judgment, material of a similar type against Mr Depp is time and again acted on.’

But, Mr Caldecott said, evidence adverse to Ms Heard was not given the same weight.

The barrister said: ‘The judge had a very favourable starting point of Ms Heard and really was not particularly interested in this adverse evidence.’

He added that ‘the disparity of approach to the evidence of Ms Heard and Mr Depp’ caused Mr Depp ‘substantial unfairness’.

Mr Caldecott said Mr Depp ‘had his suspicions about Ms Heard’s evidence’ at the time of the trial, ‘but he had no evidence to support them’.

The barrister added: ‘Ms Heard took every available step to suppress the evidence.’

Sasha Wass QC, representing The Sun’s publisher News Group Newspapers (NGN), said Mr Depp’s complaint was that the trial judge was ‘favourable’ to Ms Heard’s evidence but ‘unfavourable’ to the actor’s.

Ms Wass said: ‘The obvious inference to be drawn from that state of affairs is that the judge found Ms Heard to be a compelling witness on the one hand and Mr Depp to be a witness who lacked credibility on the other hand.’

She added: ‘It is suggested … that the judge failed to explain his reasons.

‘We say this is wrong. Furthermore, the suggestion that no witness is found to have lied … the judge did find that, on multiple occasions, that Mr Depp had lied.’

She said the judge ‘did not use the word’, but repeatedly said he did not accept Mr Depp’s evidence. 

Ms Wass said the change in the date on which Ms Heard claimed an assault in March 2013 took place was ‘a genuine mistake by a complainant who was the subject of long-term domestic abuse who has muddled up one incident with another’.

She also referred to an incident on a flight from Boston to LA in May 2014, when Mr Depp was found to have kicked Ms Heard ‘on her back or bottom’.

Ms Wass said: ‘The response (to that allegation) by Mr Depp at first was that he was entirely lucid during the course of the journey and no such incident occurred.’

But she added that text messages which were disclosed by Mr Depp showed ‘firstly that Mr Depp had apologised to Ms Depp for his behaviour’.

She said the texts also showed that ‘he had consumed large amounts of alcohol … pills and drugs, which he accepted was a reference to illegal drugs and he accepted that he had blacked out’.

Ms Wass argued that those facts ‘would have enabled any judge to say that the account given by Ms Heard was preferable’.

Adam Wolanski QC, representing the Sun’s publisher News Group Newspapers (NGN), said in written submissions that Mr Depp’s ‘fresh evidence’ was said to support ‘a theory that Ms Heard was a ‘gold-digger”.

But, he said, ‘the evidence is not ‘fresh’ at all, since it could have been obtained with reasonable diligence for (the) trial’.

Mr Wolanski added: ‘The ‘fresh’ evidence – which the respondents accept is apparently credible insofar as it shows that Ms Heard has not yet finished making her pledged payments to the charities – only goes to a highly peripheral and unpleaded matter and is of no relevance to the pleaded issues, i.e. the 14 assaults, that Mr Justice Nicol had to decide.

‘The evidence would have had no impact on Ms Heard’s credibility had it been before the trial judge, since it does not demonstrate that Ms Heard or any of the respondents’ witnesses lied.’

She told the court: ‘The application to admit the evidence should therefore be refused … (and) the application for permission to appeal should be dismissed.’

Mr Depp sued NGN in June 2018 over the column by the newspaper’s executive editor Dan Wootton, which referred to ‘overwhelming evidence’ he attacked Ms Heard.

In his judgment, Mr Justice Nicol concluded that 12 of the 14 alleged incidents of domestic violence relied on by NGN in its defence of the actor’s claim did occur.

The judge also found Mr Depp put Ms Heard in ‘fear for her life’ on three occasions, including one the actress described as a ‘three-day hostage situation’ in Australia in March 2015.

But Mr Depp’s legal team claims Mr Justice Nicol ‘failed to examine the competing accounts of each incident, or to explain whether he found them proved and, if so, on what basis’.

They also argue ‘the judge should have analysed the extent to which Ms Heard’s evidence undermined her credibility in relation to her allegations of physical assault/injury’.

Just days after the ruling in November, Mr Depp announced he had been asked by Warner Brothers to resign from his role in the Harry Potter spin-off franchise Fantastic Beasts – the very role which prompted Mr Wootton to ask how JK Rowling could be ‘genuinely happy’ Mr Depp was cast in the film.

Mr Depp is currently embroiled in a separate libel battle in the US, having sued Ms Heard personally over a 2018 Washington Post opinion piece in which she claimed to be a victim of domestic abuse but did not mention the actor by name.

The actor’s $50million (£35million) US case against Ms Heard was recently delayed until April 2022.

At the conclusion of Thursday’s hearing, Lord Justice Underhill – sitting with Lord Justice Dingemans – said the court would give its ruling at a later date.

He said: ‘We are not going to reach an immediate decision today … we will make it very shortly.’