UK tabloid lawyers urge court to 'throw out' Johnny Depp's libel claim

After Johnny Depp's confession that he occasionally took MDMA and other drugs with his wife Amber Heard, the defence lawyer team in his libel suit against a British tabloid is urging the court to "throw out" his claim.

Johnny Depp is suing News Group Newspapers (NGN), and Dan Wootton, its executive editor, over an article in one of its tabloid in April 2018 that referred to him as a "wife beater". Lawyers for the tabloid called the High Court to throw out Depp's libel suit on Thursday arguing that the film star failed to disclose evidence relating to his drug use, reports ABC News.

At a preliminary hearing of the trial which is due to open at the High Court in London on Tuesday, July 7, lawyers for the tabloid sought the court to dismiss Depp's case because he failed to disclose text messages showing that he tried to buy MDMA and other narcotics while he was in Australia with Amber Heard in 2015.

The NGN's lawyer, Adam Wolanski, said that withholding those texts qualifies as a breach of a previous court order which required Depp to provide all documents from the separate libel suit he has filed against his ex-wife in the United States.

"There is a real risk that the claimant has failed to provide proper disclosure to the defendants, and that the defendants cannot have a fair trial," he said. Wolanski added that the drug use by the 57-year-old is relevant to the case as Heard had claimed she was subjected to "a three-day ordeal of physical assaults" by him during which time he allegedly took MDMA, also known as ecstasy, and drank heavily.

Meanwhile, Depp's lawyer David Sherborne argued that the libel suit is not about whether the Oscar-winner asked for drugs but instead about "whether the defendants can prove that the claimant committed serious domestic violence and put Ms. Heard in fear."

The court row comes after the "Fantastic Beasts" actor admitted in his witness statement that he had been "open about my challenges with alcoholism and addiction throughout my life." He confessed that he occasionally took MDMA, magic mushrooms, and cocaine with his then-wife Heard but claimed drugs or alcohol never made him "undertake violence against anyone."

Depp and Heard met on the set of the 2011 comedy "The Rum Diary" and married in Los Angeles in February 2015. They separated in 2016, and finalised their divorce the next year.

In 2018, Heard wrote an article in The Washington Times portraying herself as a domestic abuse victim without taking her ex-husband's name, after which Depp filed a $50m defamation suit against her citing that her "false" allegations cost him the prized role of Captain Jack Sparrow in "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise.