Lawsuit over comic's claim she was blackmailing Johnny Depp

Doug Stanhope is being sued by Amber Heard for claiming that she is blackmailing her estranged husband Johnny Depp.

Heard has claimed the Pirates Of The Caribbean repeatedly physically assaulted her during their 16-month marriage.

But in an article this week Stanhope said that she was lying and that Depp ‘got used, manipulated, set up and made to look like an a–hole’.

Heard’s attorney immediately slammed the story as ‘unequivocally false’ and has now filed a lawsuit calling Stanhope’s claims ‘highly defamatory’.

The papers lodged in Arizona superior court say: ‘Heard never undertook any action that could even remotely be described as "blackmail".’

Stanhope is a friend of Depp’s and claims the actor told him before the break-up that: ‘Amber was now going to leave him, threatening to lie about him publicly in any and every possible duplicitous way if he didn’t agree to her terms’.

In her defamation lawsuit, Heard is seeking the ‘maximum possibly jury award’, which she plans to donate to a domestic violence charity in Arizona.

The documents, obtained by obtained by Us Weekly magazine, claim Stanhope’s article was ‘filled with completely false, highly defamatory and very hurtful statements’.

They say the comic was ‘engaged in a classic case of "attacking the victim," in an effort to discredit Heard, destroy her good name and reputation, and severely harm her hard-earned entertainment career, on top of the campaign of violence that Depp has inflicted upon her for years.’

Depp’s lawyer has denied Heard’s allegations of mistreatment, claiming that she is ‘attempting to secure a premature financial resolution by alleging abuse’.
 

Published: 4 Jun 2016