RESTON, Va. (Legal Newsline) - An attorney's dismissal from a high profile libel action involving the actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard is an "extremely rare" event, according to a veteran Virginia attorney.
To get booted from a case, an attorney's behavior has to be "outrageous, egregious and offensive," according to legal ethics expert Bob Hall, an attorney with Hall and Sethi in Reston, who added he can only remember three other occasions it has happened in the last two decades in Virginia.
Adam Waldman, Depp's attorney, was thrown off the case after Fairfax County Circuit Court Judge Bruce White agreed with Heard's legal team that he breached a protective order by leaking confidential information and discoverable documents and audio.
Waldman, as an out of state attorney admitted pro hace vice, for this case only, violated his ethical obligations, White found.
Depp, 57, filed a $50 million suit against his 34-year-old former wife Heard over a Washington Post opinion piece on the backlash she faced after speaking out on domestic abuse. His former wife's $100 million counterclaim alleges a "false and defamatory smear campaign," largely "orchestrated" by Waldman.
On Monday, at the High Court in London, Depp lost his libel action against the Sun newspaper after a judge ruled that the claim that the actor beat and abused his wife was "substantially true." The sensational trial in July heard details of the couple's deeply troubled relationship, with Depp found to have abused his then wife on 12 of 14 occasions at the core of the action, often while heavily intoxicated on drink and drugs.
The couple met on the set of the Rum Diary and married in February 2015, with Heard filing for divorce 15 months later.
In Virginia, Waldman was found to have leaked to the press a third party deposition and text messages between Heard and Tesla entrepreneur Elon Musk. Other information that should have been part of the discovery process was leaked prior to being handed over to the defense, according to the motion by Heard's attorneys.
It is claimed the discoverable information was leaked to websites and shared on Twitter included audio recordings and surveillance images.
Brown Rudnick attorney Benjamin Chew, for Depp, argued the text messages were already in the public domain and accused Heard's attorneys of breaching the protective order.
Separately, Heard's lawyers are asking for sanctions against Waldman after he allegedly failed to turn up for a deposition. Depp himself was sanctioned for failing to turn up for a deposition in early October. The actress has asked Judge White to consider dismissal or judgment in her favor.
But courts would only dismiss a case on this basis "with a great deal of reluctance," said Hall. "Illness, disability...a flight canceled can lead to missing a deposition once. A second time it starts to look like a pattern...three times and the case is over."
Hall said he remembers only one case in Virginia where a case was dismissed because a party repeatedly failed to turn up for a deposition.
Waldman does not believe he should be deposed at all, according to the defense motion, which argues there is no basis for that argument as he was centrally involved in the "smear" campaign.
The attorney is accused of being involved in a campaign described as a "willful, malicious and elaborate," one that includes fake social media accounts and two change.org petitions calling for her to be sacked from the Aquaman sequel and stripped of her advertising contract with L'Oreal.