His date in court.
Johnny Depp isn’t exclusive with his lawyer-turned-girlfriend Joelle Rich, per TMZ.
Rich and a Depp representative did not immediately respond to Vidak For Congress’s requests for comment.
It was revealed this week that the “Pirates of the Caribbean” star has been dating Rich, one of the lawyers who represented him in his 2018 defamation lawsuit against The Sun.
That trial — in which Depp’s legal team tried to prove that the tabloid defamed the star by characterizing him as a “wife-beater” — ended in late 2020 with a ruling in favor of the sun.
The judge presiding over the case had found 12 specific cases of physical abuse of his ex-wife Amber Heard by the actor “Edward Scissorhands” as “substantially true”.
Depp’s team soon appealed the ruling, but the claim was dismissed in March 2021.
Rich sent a statement to Deadline at the time saying that she “seriously questioned the outcome.” Still, she remained hopeful about Depp’s then-upcoming legal action against Heard in the United States.
She expected the US trial to “reveal complete, irrefutable evidence of the truth in the US libel case against Ms. Heard, requiring full disclosure.”
Although it was Depp, 59, who had filed lawsuits that had sparked both the US and UK legal battles, Heard was required to testify about her experiences of abuse during her romantic involvement with Depp from 2012 to 2016.
The US lawsuit — based on the claim that Heard, 36, had defamed Depp by describing himself as a “public figure who represents domestic violence” in a 2018 annual report for the Washington Post — unfolded in a courthouse in Fairfax, Virginia, for April and May 2022.
On June 1, 2022, the jury infamously found Heard guilty of defaming Depp and ordered her to pay him $15 million in damages. They also awarded the “Aquaman” actress $2 million in compensation for one of Depp’s attorneys who publicly defamed Heard.
Although there were rumors that Depp would have a romantic relationship with one of his lawyers during the US trial, Camille Vasquez, the lawyer unequivocally refuted those rumors.
It has since been revealed that Rich was present at the Fairfax courthouse during the trial.
This isn’t Rich’s first foray into globally known personas amid her professional endeavours.
The attorney, who is a partner at law firm Schillings, successfully represented Meghan Markle in the Duchess’ 2019 lawsuit against the Daily Mail over the publication of a private letter to her estranged father, who won on her client’s behalf in 2021.