Johnny Depp was subject to the intricacies of the Civil Procedure Rules on 18 May 2020 when he applied for relief from sanctions after serving witness statements in his libel claim against the Sun Newspaper eight hours late.

Depp, a Hollywood heavyweight, had previously issued proceedings against the newspaper over allegations it made about his behaviour towards ex-wife Amber Heard.  The trial, which was adjourned from March, is now due to commence on 7 July.  The court had stated that witness statements in the matter should be served by 4pm on 6 March but notwithstanding this they were served some eight hours late, just after midnight the next day.  Depp successfully persuaded the High Court in an interim ruling to allow relief from sanctions in respect of this failure but Mr Justice Nichol, in ruling on how relevant the contributions from the witnesses would be, refused Depp permission to call one witness and allowed the other to give only limited evidence at trial. 

The witnesses were David Killackey, a mechanic employed by Depp since 2010, and Heard's former personal assistant Kate James.  Depp applied for permission to rely on the witness statements of those two potential witnesses and to call those witnesses to give evidence at trial. 

Considering the criteria in Denton, the Court agreed that given the adjournment, future hearing dates would not be compromised nor the conduct of the litigation disrupted.  The breach was deemed neither serious nor significant and relief for the late service was granted.  However, the court refused permission for Depp to call Killackey, saying any relevance his evidence might have was too marginal to allow Depp to adduce it. The witness said nothing of significance as to whether Depp’s behaviour towards Heard was controlling or otherwise.  Depp was given permission to call James to give evidence to a limited extent, with the judge going through her statement almost line-by-line to rule on what was relevant.

Whilst not often attracting national media attention, the need for an application for relief from sanctions to meet the criteria set out in Denton, is very familiar to litigation lawyers and is applied in the usual way in this case.  This case also shows that even for a Hollywood A-Lister the courts are taking a more considered approach as to the content of any witness evidence in determining whether there is a need for a witness to attend court and parties should be mindful of this when preparing their case.