Johnny Depp is dating his lawyer, Joelle Rich, but sources say it’s pretty causual.
via Page Six:
It came out this week that the “Pirates of the Caribbean” star has been romantically involved with Rich, one of the defense attorneys who represented him in his 2018 libel lawsuit against the Sun.
That trial — wherein Depp’s legal team sought to prove the tabloid defamed the star by characterizing him as a “wife beater” — ended in late 2020, with a ruling in the Sun’s favor.
The judge presiding over the case had found 12 specific instances of the “Edward Scissorhands” actor’s physical abuse of his ex wife Amber Heard to be “substantially true.”
Depp’s team soon filed to appeal the ruling, but the claim was denied in March 2021.
At the time, Rich sent a statement to Deadline that said she “seriously questioned” the outcome. Still, she remained hopeful about Depp’s then-upcoming legal proceedings against Heard in the United States.
She anticipated the US trial would reveal “complete, irrefutable evidence of the truth in the U.S. libel case against Ms. Heard where she will have to provide full disclosure.”
While it was Depp, 59, who had filed lawsuits instigating both the US and UK legal battles, Heard was obliged to testify about her experiences of abuse during her romantic involvement with Depp from 2012 to 2016.
The US lawsuit — which was anchored in the claim that Heard, 36, had defamed Depp by describing herself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse” in a 2018 op-ed for the Washington Post — unfolded in a Fairfax, Virginia, courthouse, over April and May of 2022.
On June 1, 2022, the jury infamously decided Heard was guilty of defaming Depp, ordering her to pay him $15 million in damages. They also awarded the “Aquaman” actress $2 million as compensation for one of Depp’s former lawyers having defamed Heard in the media.
Though there were whispers of Depp becoming romantically involved with one of his defense attorneys at the US trial, Camille Vasquez, the lawyer unequivocally refuted those rumors.
It’s since come to light that Rich was in fact in attendance at the Fairfax courthouse during the trial.
This isn’t Rich’s first brush with globally famous personas in the course of her professional endeavors.
The attorney, who is a partner at Schillings law firm, successfully represented Meghan Markle in the Duchess’ 2019 lawsuit against the Daily Mail over the publication of a private letter to her estranged father, winning on behalf of her client in 2021.
We expect they’ll be going their separate ways before the year is over.
