While Johnny Depp is best known for performances in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series, Edward Scissorhands, Donnie Brasco and many other movies, lately the actor has mainly been drawing attention for the drama in his personal life. A little over a month ago, the defamation trial between him and his ex-wife Amber Heard concluded, with Depp being awarded $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages (though that latter amount was later reduced to $350,000). Now today brings word that Depp has resolved another one of his cases, which in this instance means he won’t have to go through another trial.
You may recall the 2018 movie City of Lies, which saw Johnny Depp playing Russell Poole, the LAPD detective who looked into the murders of Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. City of Lies was also the source of an assault and battery case brought against Depp by Gregg “Rocky” Brooks, the movie’s location manager, back in 2018. Four years later, a filing in Los Angeles Superior Court from one of Brooks’ lawyers, Arbella Azizian (via Deadline), states that after weeks of behind-the-scenes talks, a settlement of sorts has been reached. While the terms were not made public and it’s possible this settlement could end up being scrapped, it appears that Depp opted to pay Brooks to drop the lawsuit two weeks before the trial was set to begin.
For those out of the loop on this specific case, the lawsuit claims that on April 13, 2017, Gregg Brooks went to tell Johnny Depp that production on City of Lies was wrapping for the night. Depp, who allegedly had booze-smelling breath, then supposedly started screaming obscenities at the location manager and then hit him “twice in the lower left side of his rib cage and causing pain.” The actor then yelled that he would pay Brooks $100,000 to “punch me in the face right now,” but he was soon removed from the area by his security team. Brooks was asked afterwards not to sue the City of Lies production, and when he refused, he was pink-slipped on April 16, 2017.
The trial between Johnny Depp and Gregg Brooks had been delayed by the pandemic, but with just a few weeks to go until it was set to begin, barring a surprise last-minute change, we won’t be seeing Depp back in a courtroom to deal with this particular legal drama. Had the trial gone forward, one of Depp’s lawyers would have been Camille Vasquez, who also represented him in the defamation trial against Amber Heard. Speaking of Heard, she’s now facing her own new lawsuit, this one filed by the New York Marine and General Insurance Company.
While the trial between Johnny Depp and Gregg Brooks has been set aside, the actor isn’t out of the legal woods for good just yet, as Amber Heard’s lawyer is looking to get the verdict of the defamation trial tossed out by claiming there was an error with Juror 15. As far as Depp’s acting work goes, his upcoming movie La Favorite will eventually be released on Netflix.
