Amber Heard has yet again changed lawyers in her attempt to force two insurance firms to pick up the bill for her libel payout to ex-husband Johnny Depp.
Heard, 36, was ordered to pay her ex-husband more than $10 million in damages at the end of the explosive trial in June, when a jury ruled she had defamed Depp in a newspaper opinion piece published in 2018.
She is currently represented by David L. Axelrod and Jay Ward Brown in her appeal of that verdict.
The actress has also recently hired Kirk Pasich on her legal team in an attempt to get multiple insurance companies to cover her legal bills, which may surpass $15million, according to Puck News.
Puck claims that Heard‘s expenses soared over $8million before the Virginia trial even began. Heard’s team appears to want homeowner’s insurance to cover those bills.
The battle concerns Travelers Commercial Insurance Company and New York Marine General Insurance Company. Travelers initially sued New York Marine in July 2021 to gain reimbursement for half of what it spent on defending a client that turned out to be Heard.
Heard’s homeowners policy with Travelers covered ‘libel’ to the point of about $500,000, while New York Marine had issued her a general liability policy for $1million.
The crux of the suit was Travelers believing Heard had the right to pick her own lawyers, while New York Marine disagreed, believing the case was ‘fairly straight forward’. A judge agreed with New York Marine’s desire to use local, cheaper attorneys.
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Travelers had doubts about New York Marine’s appointed lawyers Timothy McEvoy and Sean Patrick Roche, arguing they ‘piggy-backed’ on the work of Heard attorneys Roberta Kaplan and Elaine Charlson Bredehoft.
New York Marine, for their part, claimed their attorneys were frozen out by Kaplan and Bredehoft. They now want $621,693 paid back in exchange for their contribution to Heard’s defense fund because their lawyers were kept out of various legal proceedings.