Gotta love court caes in countries with strong legal institutions that force out the truth. Libel cases are the juiciest.

Amber Heard published (implicitly) that Johnny Depp hit her.
Colleen Rooney published that Rebekkah Vardy sneaked stories about her to the press.

So Depp and Vardy both sued for libel.

In the discovery process (where docs and files must be disclosed by both slides), Vardy’s agent lost her phone in the North Sea. Then the agent was declared unfit to be cross-examined in court and withdrew her written evidence. The trial starts next month.

In the Depp case (this trial has started), Johnny Depp discussed drowning Amber Heard and burning her corpse in graphic texts to the British actor Paul Bettany, a court in Virginia was told.

The full Times article on the Depp case:

Lawyers for Heard sought to depict Depp as a prodigious drug user who was prone to violence as the Hollywood actor spent a third day giving evidence during a $50 million defamation trial against his ex-wife.

He sued Heard over her claims of being a victim of domestic violence, alleging she ruined his career.

During cross-examination, Benjamin Rottenborn, one of Heard’s lawyers, showed the court in Fairfax messages between Depp and his celebrity friends including Bettany, Sir Elton John and the shock rocker Marilyn Manson.

Depp admitted he had taken cocaine with Bettany, with whom he starred with in the films The Tourist (2010), Transcendence (2014) and Mortdecai (2015).
In June 2013, Depp texted Bettany: “Let’s burn Amber!!!” Another read: “Let’s drown her before we burn her!!!”

Rottenborn apologised to the court before reading another explicit message which stated: “I will f*** her burnt corpse afterwards to make sure she is dead.”
The exchange also included references to Depp’s use of drugs and alcohol around the time of a flight from Boston to Los Angeles, upon which Heard alleges he was abusive.
Bettany addressed the messages in an interview with The Times earlier this year. “We live in a world without context,” he said, adding that no one would “feel comfortable having a team of lawyers scour their private text messages”.

Depp, in a December 2014 text to Heard, described himself as a “f***ing savage”.

In separate messages to friends, Depp said that Heard believed his “Peruvian period” — a reference to cocaine use — made him a “monster” and he was “ruining the relationship”.

The trial had previously been told “monster” was a word Heard used to reference Depp.

Rottenborn referenced messages between Depp and Manson. Depp admitted they had taken cocaine together “maybe a couple of times”.

“I once gave Marilyn Manson a pill so that he would stop talking so much,” Depp said to laughter in the courtroom.

Depp described John, 75, as a “dear friend” who had helped him get sober.

Rottenborn read out an email from Depp to the singer from July 2013 in which he referred to his former partner Vanessa Paradis, the French singer and model who is the mother to Depp’s two children.

He said his children had “fallen head over heels in love with Amber” but worried the “French extortionist” would attempt to “brainwash them against her”.
Depp used an explicit term to refer to Paradis. The jury was also shown a picture taken in Heard’s apartment in Los Angeles in March 2013, a point when Depp’s sobriety had faltered.

The image showed a glass table with a glass of amber liquid and four lines of white powder. Asked if he drank whiskey in the morning, Depp quipped: “Isn’t happy hour anytime?” Laughter broke out in the courtroom following the comment.

Rottenborn later displayed a picture taken at Depp’s recording studio of “four giant bags of pot”. In another image, Depp was seen unconscious on a black leather couch with ice cream spilt over him.

Depp said he had worked 17 hours and taken opiates while working on the film Black Mass in Boston.

He told the court that Heard set up the picture and handed him the ice cream when she knew he was about to fall asleep.

The trial was previously told Depp needed to take the opiates to feel “normal” after becoming addicted to them.

Rottenborn also depicted Depp as having a violent temper and said he had a history of smashing up hotel rooms.

“I have assaulted a couch or two, yes sir,” Depp replied.

Heard wrote in a 2018 column in The Washington Post that she was a victim of domestic abuse. Depp launched legal action in response and Heard has countersued for $100 million.

Depp, 58, and Heard, 35, met on the set of the 2011 film The Rum Diary. They married in 2015 and divorced two years later. The trial continues.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/john ... -sz0fnpghb

I can't believe I just read a celebrity story. But anyway, very interesting evidence in court of Depp's constant drug taking and crazy behaviour, appearing to contradict his public statements aimed at discrediting Heard and her claims of physical abuse. More to come, I guess. Good luck to the court.

Vardy v Rooney - the trial is hotting up. Rooney looking smug, Vardy sobbing in the box (witness not penalty).

From wags to witches.

Caitlin Moran sums up the Vardy v Rooney trial.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a-wo ... -wjqhvk0x5

As everyone is surely aware, the High Court has been hearing the sensational, £3 million Rebekah Vardy v Coleen Rooney libel trial. So how have things gone for Vardy? Well, put it this way: I have such an overdeveloped ability to imagine awful things that, for years, I genuinely worried about the possibility that I might give birth to the next incarnation of the Panchen Lama, because I didn’t want China to be “angry” with me. Yet even I can’t imagine how things could have gone worse for Vardy.

For starters, the court saw texts from Vardy’s agent, Caroline Watt, admitting she sold stories about Rooney to the press. When asked why she didn’t stop her agent from pursuing this alarming, catastrophic and immoral course of action, Vardy claimed she was “too distracted” — because she was watching Dancing on Ice and had just seen The Only Way Is Essex star Gemma Collins “faceplanting”. It’s an illuminating insight into someone’s priorities and thought process.

So, legally, things are looking . . . well, a lot like Gemma Collins’s face, heading for the ice. But this is only the start of Vardy’s problems. After all, she’s a tabloid celebrity: most people following the case don’t care about all the dry, technical whatever. Image is more important. But Vardy has had a mare here too, as the court artist depicting the trial really seems to have had it in for her. Rooney has been sketched as all cheekbone and eyelash, while her husband — the spud-like Wayne Rooney — has been depicted as some kind of homoerotic, Pierre et Gilles bear-god: lush of lip, Roman of nose. Vardy, on the other hand, has been drawn as if she’s one of the extras on EastEnders called on to “mind the stall” when Martin Fowler needs to get a sandwich. The artist has resolutely refused to accurately reflect either the bouff or the balayage of Vardy’s blow-dry, which will be devastating to her. Guys, they’ve drawn her lips as if filler doesn’t exist. It’s a brutal move.

Vardy’s final and biggest misfortune, however, is that the judge overseeing the case is a woman. Mrs Justice Steyn is no lightweight — she’s previous presided over Guantanamo Bay trials and hearings about Saudi arms deals — but her gender will, I suspect, become very relevant, given the Affair of Sarah Harding’s Handbag. Rooney told the court this week that in 2018 the late Girls Aloud singer Sarah Harding attended the National Television Awards, where she got into a “heated” argument with Vardy after catching Vardy taking a photo of the contents of her handbag.

Were a man presiding over the trial, I suspect this detail would not be particularly noticed. He wouldn’t really care. A fellow woman, however, knows what an intensely private — and borderline sacred — thing a woman’s handbag is. To take a picture of its contents is basically like upskirting an accessory: a profoundly unforgivable act. If I were Vardy, I’d be very scared that a female tribal elder now had me down as someone who might invade her clutch. A tote-peeper. Women don’t forgive other women for stuff like that.

Rebekah Vardy’s account? I don’t know how much you lose in a libel case, but it looks like it’s going to be emptied out.