Wasn’t is that
NYM and Travellers were suing each other, on basis of disagreeing on proportion they had spent and other matters…all settled outside of court with confidential agreement…as you’d expect insurances companies to prefer.
Then the two companies had a joint action to sue AH…on ground of insurance not covering actual malice, and also other matters such as her not using the recommended lawyers.
AH then tried to go the case dismissed because she claimed lack of jurisdiction….she claimed to be stateless because she’d moved abroad, which is a ridiculous as she can only be stateless if the USA revoke her right to live there, not just that she chooses not to. It was clearly a non-argument and done to bide time.
She then counter-sued, tried to claim issues with them trying to choose her legal team etc, even though it was her who causes her team to change 3 times, plus claiming that they owe her money because she started paying legal fees (less than £1m) before the first insurance payout was agreed (but isn’t that her own fault as well, otherwise if she was supposed to do that and start the process without their approval, it would have been backpayed by insurance as part of the process?). Possibly she may also have been paying for the counter claim work…because her insurance is only for defence, so maybe they didn’t cover all costs because she was initiating something that wasn’t defence. I find it highly suspect if the insurers ratified the approach of claiming she’d suffered £100m of defamation herself…the time band it applied to was only a couple of years…there’s no way she would have ever earned that in that timeframe even if JD had admitted domestic assault from the start…she’s not a popular or talented actress. £5m would have been a more plausible claim.
There’s a lot of stuff with her fees being paid by insurance that don’t make sense. I think there were probably plenty of places the insurers could have refused to pay earlier but didn’t. They also paid her appeal costs, which was a complete shambles…using Michele Dauber to write a sham document mixing up events and accusations so they don’t even match AH’s within that trial, plus claiming that if in her brain she considers herself ‘abused’, that was all that was required for the appeal judges to consider it ‘truth’. Plus had a lawyer who tried to get around the page count limitations by using the wrong font size to get more words in, blatantly ignoring the judges basic instructions etc. then the insurance companies offered JD £1m to settle the case, if he agrees to also remove his appeal. That means the insurers likely believed the appeal results could make matters worse for them (remove the £2m win for AH, which they presumably could off-set if he called in the full judgment amount). I think there is a lot more behind them suing her, I think she was bullying the insurers, threatening to sue them anytime she didn’t get own way.
The judge dismissed her counterclaim, but I think the case against her is still ongoing? It’ll be interesting if she loses. Will the media then acknowledge that she lied on the witness stand about the money…or will it turn into an another case of poor AH…the insurance companies used bots to persecute her as well?
Her being covered by insurance, in retrospect, explains a lot of her attitude in court. Regardless of the result, she didn’t expect to pay any more than the less than £1m in legal fees she’d already forked out. The whole thing gave her massive attention, if she won, she stood to gain £100m (and she’s so arrogant she might have believed it possible), and if she lost…she could go on a PR frenzy and claim to be a victim of social media/bots etc and claim the jury was biased…setting off a legion of conspiracy nuts and attracting anyone who wants easy money and attention (Alexi Mostrous) to aid and abet her.
In a lot of ways, because she was protected by insurance, she had no way of actually ‘losing’ due to the court case. Only JD could stand to lose any cash in the judgment plus he had to pay all his own fees which was made worse as her side gave his lawyers the run-around at every opportunity, and revealing all the personal issues with drink/drugs/mmeans he’s even less insurable by the big studios for the blockbuster movies…he’s sealed his fate and I doubt he will do any movie projects now that aren’t independently funded.
Conversely AH…she knew she got Aquaman initially because JD pushed them to give her the chance, then she got kept for the second movie (where the studio wanted to recast due to lack of chemistry…a polite way to say she is is tit actress) due to Elon Musk making legal threats…claims of who knows what (and who knows whether true), but something the studio didn’t want her making public. Her options contract was for 3 movies, in theory the legal threat could have kept her in for the 3rd, but presumably she could have worked out that the 3rd isn‘t likely to happen, or they will have got statements and researched the accusations to be able to rebut legal threats better next time…they possibly would even not make a 3rd movie just to avoid dealing with the AH issue, or just write the script so the action takes place in a location Mera conveniently isn’t seen in…if she’d worked that out then she would already know her only big money job had ended. She potentially would be able to act, but back to the smaller wage she was used to. She really didn’t have much to lose at the trial at all. Especially…if it is true, which seems likely seeing as there was a legal case over frozen embryos, that she is getting monthly child support from the richest man in the world.
I think she has actually gained a lot of friends in the media, a lot of friends in extreme feminist brigade, and a loyal following of lunatics who are willing to openly lie and ignore evidence online to try to improve her reputation.
The hilarious thing is, that for all their support in the media and on X, a pitiful amount of people went to watch her independent movie, many of her lunatics admitted online to buying tickets even though they weren’t attending, it’s made so little at the box office that it won’t have covered her own salary for the job. Then with Aquaman 2, these type of films have a wide release and a fan base than have nothing to do with her…it’s struggled to break even and dropped out of cinemas quickly compared to for example Wonka. Yet JD’s independent movie did very well in France on initial release and is slowly being distributed to other counties…where there is an audience for it even though it is French language so very niche and there likely isn’t much funding for marketing. There is still a general audience appetite to see him at the cinema.
I think this is the thing that the media can’t cope with, they picked a side…and the public picked the other side. The media lost control of the narrative and instead of admitting it…now won’t let it go…especially if AH for example has £50k a month(or more) to spare to pay PR companies to trash JD and enhance her (which is very possible if she has huge child support, and the money will be there for years). This also may be why JD and team don’t fight back via the media…if would just turn into a war of which one of them can spend the most on PR companies…and he’s prone to losing anyway as a man accused of violence the media will find it easier to side with her to keep other clients and other narratives they support happy as well. It’s all a big balancing act.
Notice one thing though, Tortoise podcast, plus the DM are UK based. It seems that because JD lost the UK case…the media feel much safer in the UK to write blatant hit pieces. I doubt he has the time/money/energy to expend on it…but I would love for him to take legal action to get Tortoise to provide him lawyers with the data showing these Saudi bot accounts. According to the podcast, the data analyst was able to prove this by using waybackwhen to see that current pro-depp accounts were historically pro-Saudi government and those posts are now deleted. Yet interestingly…waybackwhen only archives ‘popular’ Twitter accounts…Alexi at 24k followed has never been archived. So if these accounts do exist…they are big ones, bigger in fact that most of the known JD support accounts which are clearly humans with natural opinions as they are linked to YouTubers, and the data can be checked against a public website. So…I’m confident that JD can obliterate this claim of there being evidence pretty easily….but it would need a costly legal process to get the evidence opened up. There’s always the chance of some crazy double bluff from AH, which might stop him doing anything for fear of what he might find and not be able to prove, I wouldn’t put it past her to buy bots to troll her in order to blame him for it…just for the publicly/attention things like the podcast create for her!
Interesting as well, pre-trial she was claiming he was using Russian bots (because one of his lawyers had at some point done work for Russian clients which she claimed meant he had the contacts…what a reach!), but in the documents related to this they were referring to accounts that clearly were not paid bots/trolls. Such and IFOD (fanclub of 20yrs) and Laura Brokov among others. She applied to basically dox 200 accounts and Twitter and the judge said no…the opinions of unconnected people have no relevance to the legal case. So this idea of JD using bots goes back years and has never been proved with any actual example or any real logic showing that he or his team would have paid for it. She’s pushed it in such a way that if any Saudi bots are discovered…I think there’s a fair chance she has bought them. Especially when you consider that JD wants publicity for his work/charity stuff..not his personal life…the constant war in X isn’t actually helping him, so bots keeping this legal matter live don’t help. It’s AH who suffers if people stop talking about it.