Speaker 1: You know, Captain Jack Sparrow. Captain Jack Sparrows, let didn't
Speaker 1: see your ship, Captain. I'm in the market as it were.
Speaker 1: You are, without doubt the worst part I've heard of.
Speaker 1: But you have heard of, Yes we have. Johnny Depp's
Speaker 1: role as the charming and rogueish Captain Jack Sparrow earned
Speaker 1: Walt Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean franchise about four point
Speaker 1: five billion dollars in box office sales. During his nearly
Speaker 1: twenty years of stardom. Depp developed a swashbuckling lifestyle to match,
Speaker 1: with upkeep of about two million dollars a month. Depth's
Speaker 1: fortune has vanished, and he's fighting back in court. In January,
Speaker 1: he sued his former business managers, and now he's suing
Speaker 1: his entertainment lawyer for malpractice. He wants thirty million dollars
Speaker 1: in contingency fees paid over the past eighteen years returned.
Speaker 1: Joining us is David Bissinger, founding partner at Bissinger Ashman
Speaker 1: and WILLIAMS. Dave. There are seven claims in this suit.
Speaker 1: What stands out to you as the most important? The
Speaker 1: first claim as uh, the big one, and that's breach
Speaker 1: of fiduciary duty. That's the claim that will make this
Speaker 1: case impossible, I think to resolve in a summary judgment.
Speaker 1: Motion are certainly not an emotion to dismiss UH, and
Speaker 1: so the parties will either have to settle it or
Speaker 1: go to trial. Exclaim that a little bit more well,
Speaker 1: breach of fiduciary duty claim imposes a pawn UH both
Speaker 1: the managers in the prior depth case and now the
Speaker 1: lawyers and the one that was just filed UH this week.
Speaker 1: Basically a duty of utmost good faith UH and trust
Speaker 1: and confidence UH. In fact, there's some famous Texas fiduciary
Speaker 1: duty defense lawyers that describe a jury charge for breach
Speaker 1: of fiduciary duty as the UH infamous Mother Teresa instruction.
Speaker 1: In other words, the defendant in Texas, for example, will
Speaker 1: have to prove he complied with his fiduciary duties, thus
Speaker 1: reversing the burden to proof UH. The California jury instruction
Speaker 1: appears to put the burden on the plaintiff, but nevertheless
Speaker 1: imposes an enormously high burden on someone who does operate
Speaker 1: as a fiduciary, as both lawyers and agents do well.
Speaker 1: David's what is depth saying that his lawyer did wrong. Well,
Speaker 1: there's a variety of things. Uh. In some ways you
Speaker 1: could call it allowing him to commit uh financial or
Speaker 1: economic suicide uh in the sense of not protecting him
Speaker 1: from his own spending habits. But in fairness to Depth,
Speaker 1: there is a especially a hard money loan that was
Speaker 1: was executed by his management company TMG, apparently with the
Speaker 1: involvement of the lawyers. Hard money loan, UH is a
Speaker 1: basically a almost like a loan sharking kind of a loan.
Speaker 1: It's a high risk, high intra loan in which you
Speaker 1: pledge collateral, but it's it's not a mortgage. And in
Speaker 1: this instance, uh Depth pledged apparently his movie residuals. And
Speaker 1: according to Depth's complaint, in any event, the loan made
Speaker 1: no economic sense because the value of depths residuals, say,
Speaker 1: are in the range of fifteen million dollars per year,
Speaker 1: which the expenses, the fees and the interest of the
Speaker 1: loan are far in excess of that, at least according
Speaker 1: to Depth. Uh. No. That's and then the second piece
Speaker 1: is the contingent these contingent fee arrangements by which over
Speaker 1: time the lawyers at the law firm as well as
Speaker 1: at the management company. Because the management company UH managers
Speaker 1: were also lawyers, earned contingent fees UH allegedly without them
Speaker 1: being reduced to writing and under California law, like the
Speaker 1: law of Texas and many other states, UH, that makes
Speaker 1: the agreement avoidable. Agreement Dave in the complaint death claims
Speaker 1: in one example that he was presented only with the
Speaker 1: signature pages of the loan, and he trusted his advisors
Speaker 1: had his best interests in mind, and he signed the
Speaker 1: loan documents not appreciating it. And you have these sort
Speaker 1: of claims that he relied upon his lawyers because he
Speaker 1: didn't know about these things that were going on. How
Speaker 1: doesn't attorney's fiduciary duty compare to the duty of his
Speaker 1: business managers? You know, really, legally, June, they're not much different. UH.
Speaker 1: And I think really the issue for both the management
Speaker 1: case and the law firm case are going to come
Speaker 1: down to the factual UH components that sort of the
Speaker 1: characterization and the overall context of those relationships. UH. In
Speaker 1: both instances, I suspect that the communications were similar mostly
Speaker 1: probably we're gonna have a lot of emails, will have
Speaker 1: some meetings, and phone calls. UH. There is apparently, according
Speaker 1: to the business management case filed back in February, a
Speaker 1: former employee of the management company UH that will testify
Speaker 1: against the management company. And so it's as to the
Speaker 1: dirty things or the shady stuff I think of the
Speaker 1: term used in the complaint that the management UH fellas
Speaker 1: wanted her to do that she refused to do. And
Speaker 1: so really it's going to come down to these factual
Speaker 1: issues again, which is why it's so much more likely
Speaker 1: to lead to a trial than many other types of cases,
Speaker 1: and that will be a trial that many people will watch.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for joining us. That's David Bissinger, founding
Speaker 1: partner at Bissinger Ashman and Williams coming up on Bloomberg Law.
Speaker 1: The jury is weigh in the case against former HSBC
Speaker 1: currency trader Mark Johnson for front running. We'll listen to
Speaker 1: some parts of the recorded phone calls at the heart
Speaker 1: of the prosecution's case.