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Speaker 1: Johnny Depp has earned hundreds of millions of dollars over

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Speaker 1: his career as a top movie star and one of

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Speaker 1: Hollywood's best paid actors. His most famous role the seemingly

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Speaker 1: always drunk Captain Jack Sparrow and the Pirates of the

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Speaker 1: Caribbean that carried the Disney franchise through five movies. Hello, Hello, Party, Pause,

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Speaker 1: Saint Paul, Sleep, Paul partner, that's the one. Polly. The

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Speaker 1: fifty four year old actor owns a forty five acre

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Speaker 1: chateau in the south of France, a chain of islands

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Speaker 1: in the Bahamas on fifty ft luxury yacht, artworks by

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Speaker 1: Andy Warhol and Gustav Klimt. The list goes on and on,

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Speaker 1: adding up to a two million dollar a month lifestyle

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Speaker 1: and financial trouble. For depth, he sued his former business

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Speaker 1: manager for twenty five million dollars for negligence and mismanagement

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Speaker 1: in January. It's a contentious legal battle, with a preliminary

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Speaker 1: re skirmish on Monday in a Los Angeles court. Joining

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Speaker 1: me is Devin mccraig. He's a partner at Early Sullivan,

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Speaker 1: Right Geyser and McCray. Devin. These managers appropriately called the

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Speaker 1: management group represented Debt for seventeen years, described the basics

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Speaker 1: of his complaint against them. Well, you know, the basics

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Speaker 1: of the complaints are that they uh mismanaged his money, UH,

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Speaker 1: engaged him in conflicted transactions, uh, spent his money without

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Speaker 1: authorization or disclosure. And a lot of that is disputed

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Speaker 1: by the management company for sure. Um. But clearly what's

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Speaker 1: going on in these pleadings is each side is trying

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Speaker 1: to publicly malign the other. Well, as far as a

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Speaker 1: business manager, you know this area, is it a business

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Speaker 1: manager's responsibility to make sure that a star lives within

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Speaker 1: his means? Well, think about it this way. You you

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Speaker 1: hire a business manager to maximize your wealth. Uh. They're

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Speaker 1: not just a mailbox. They don't just pay your bills

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Speaker 1: when you direct them to do so. Um. They don't

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Speaker 1: control how much money you make from your professional services.

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Speaker 1: And it's mostly professional entertainers and athletes that engage business managers,

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Speaker 1: and so they don't procure that work for you. So

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Speaker 1: their job is to take that income and maximize your wealth. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And so as far as maximizing wealth, there's only really

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Speaker 1: two aspects to that. Taking your capital and investing it

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Speaker 1: and making it return more capital. And also on the

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Speaker 1: other side, is necessarily controlling some spending um and if

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Speaker 1: the client is spending out of control, uh, then the

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Speaker 1: business manager has something, has got to do something about it.

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Speaker 1: And what are the business manager's claims in defense and

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Speaker 1: also against step Well, I I just read the operative answer,

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Speaker 1: and you know the first hundred paragraphs are so are

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Speaker 1: really lengthy allegations regarding evidence that aren't really even necessary

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Speaker 1: for that type of pleading. So it's it's quite clear

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Speaker 1: that the initial strategy is like, we're gonna show that

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Speaker 1: how painful this litigation is going to be. There's probably

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Speaker 1: some retaliation because depth went into some details about what

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Speaker 1: they did. So right now it is a public image

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Speaker 1: fight because a lot of these allegations just don't uh

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Speaker 1: need to be in the complaint and some would say

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Speaker 1: are are are are not properly in the complaint or

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Speaker 1: the cross complaint and or answer how how much trouble

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Speaker 1: is he? And can you tell from that the complaint? Uh? No,

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Speaker 1: I can't tell from the complaint how much trouble he's in.

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Speaker 1: And who's really telling the truth about what? Uh? You know,

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Speaker 1: the answer in the first amended cross complaint had the

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Speaker 1: benefit of citing some discovering it. And it sounds like

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Speaker 1: some of the allegations based on the pleadings uh at uh,

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Speaker 1: some of depth allegations might be falsifiable. You know. For instance,

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Speaker 1: they they they say in their answer that you know,

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Speaker 1: with respect to the conflicted transactions, that he he cashed

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Speaker 1: out at a profit and anything he's still in is profitable.

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Speaker 1: There's some kind of dispute about whether the wine was

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Speaker 1: an investment or whether it was consumed um and so

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Speaker 1: they're they're saying it was consumed. Those are the types

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Speaker 1: of things that will uh you know, be at issue,

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Speaker 1: but ultimately the tact of kind of saying, uh, we

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Speaker 1: couldn't you know, it's his fault because he didn't handle

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Speaker 1: his spending. You also have a business manager that's privy

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Speaker 1: to private financial information. They become very close to their clients.

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Speaker 1: It's almost like a lawyer, and it seems somewhat unseemly

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Speaker 1: to kind of really be turning everything on him and say, Okay,

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Speaker 1: we're gonna embarrass you with all of the money you

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Speaker 1: spent and what what. They don't really challenge at least

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Speaker 1: I didn't see it based on my scheming of the

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Speaker 1: of the pleading as they don't challenge that they got

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Speaker 1: twenty eight million dollars from debt and that's a lot

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Speaker 1: of money. And so they delimit all of Depth's expenditures

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Speaker 1: and then they spend, you know, two and a half

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Speaker 1: pages on saying why Depth is a liar with respect

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Speaker 1: to things that don't even relate to this lawsuit. They

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Speaker 1: go into his marriage with Amber heard. But what they

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Speaker 1: don't do is they don't say all of the things

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Speaker 1: that they did do to earn that twenty eight million dollars.

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Speaker 1: Now on Monday, Um, I'm under the judge said it

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Speaker 1: doesn't matter that Depth spent an outrageous too many two

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Speaker 1: million dollars a month on the maintenance of his state

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Speaker 1: and his lifestyle. Is that a big win for Depth? Uh? No,

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Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think it's a really a big win.

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Speaker 1: It was. I think it was more of a discreet

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Speaker 1: issue of whether that allegation was relevant to claims of

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Speaker 1: offset with respect to their cross complaints for unpaid fees

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Speaker 1: post termination. So both sides claimed victory on Monday. Which

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Speaker 1: side Which side do you think one? Well, I think

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Speaker 1: it depends on you know, the public's reaction to this

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Speaker 1: really because as far as the case itself, UM, and

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Speaker 1: you know who's going to be successful at trial if

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Speaker 1: this case ever goes to trial, which ODUD say overwhelmingly

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Speaker 1: that it will not. Uh. The question might really be

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Speaker 1: who who who took the biggest hit in a public

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Speaker 1: in a public image perspective, and who's going to have

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Speaker 1: better settlement leverage based on uh, the notion that you know,

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Speaker 1: the longer this case goes on, the more painful it's

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Speaker 1: going to be for the other side. This is kind

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Speaker 1: of one of those instances where it appears to be

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Speaker 1: mutually assured destruction because it's embarrassing for Depth to have

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Speaker 1: all of these details revealed, and most of the public

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Speaker 1: can't get past the fact that the guy was spending

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Speaker 1: thirty dollars on wine a month or whatever it was,

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Speaker 1: and so you know that alone people start judging him.

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Speaker 1: On the other hand, you have a business management firm

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Speaker 1: that relies on trust and confidence, and you know some

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Speaker 1: of its clients might be saying, gee, you know they're

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Speaker 1: really going after Depth here. What if I get into

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Speaker 1: dispute with them? What if they start airing all my

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Speaker 1: dirty laundry in this way? This is a very aggressive

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Speaker 1: approach they've taken, and I'm not sure it's a great one.

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Speaker 1: And it all kind of came to a head. You know.

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Speaker 1: It sounds like because of this loan they gave him,

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Speaker 1: and uh, you know there's there's a question. So they

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Speaker 1: say it was his fault, uh that he spent so much. Um,

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Speaker 1: why why would they give him a five million dollar alone?

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Speaker 1: And in the in their pleading, they say that was

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Speaker 1: to help him avoid a public embarrassment, and of course

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Speaker 1: they're trying to bring that on him right now at

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Speaker 1: times ten is this all sounds like a Hollywood movie?

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Speaker 1: Now we're starting to get into into script territory. So um,

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Speaker 1: but you you're final in about fifteen seconds. You think

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Speaker 1: this is going to be a settlement, not a trial. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: maybe maybe not for a while, but I think it's

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Speaker 1: going to settle, and it will settle confidentially. That's too bad.

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Speaker 1: We want to know the details there, all right, Well,

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Speaker 1: thank you so much for joy us here on Bloomberg Law.

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Speaker 1: That's Devin McCrae. He's a partner at Early Sullivan, Wright,

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Speaker 1: Geyser and McCrae.