Johnny Depp loses UK libel case over wife-beater claims

LONDON (AP) — Johnny Depp has lost his high-stakes libel case against the Sun tabloid newspaper for labelling him a “wife beater.”

A British judge pointed to several episodes that he said showed the actor’s ex-wife had feared for her life.

Justice Andrew Nicol said Monday that the defendants had proved that what they published was “substantially true” during a high-profile trial in London over the summer that included lurid — and irreconcilable — accounts from Depp and his ex-wife Amber Heard. Depp’s lawyers said they would appeal the decision.

Depp sued News Group Newspapers, publisher of The Sun, and the newspaper’s executive editor, Dan Wootton, over an April 2018 article that accused him of assaulting fellow actor Heard.