- Johnny Depp Is Also Blaming His Lawyer for His Vanished Fortune
Johnny Depp added his longtime entertainment lawyer to the list of people he says are to blame for his vanished fortune and wants $30 million in contingency fees paid over the past 18 years returned.
The star of Walt Disney Co.’s “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise — which has garnered about $4.5 billion in box-office sales globally — sued Jacob Bloom on Tuesday for malpractice, among other claims. Depp says the lawyer was in cahoots with his former business managers at the Management Group, who the actor is already suing for allegedly mismanaging hundreds of millions of dollars he made.
The legal fallout between Depp and his former advisers has provided a rare glimpse into dealings between megastars and the people they entrust with running their business and private life.
Specifically, the 54-year-old actor claims, Bloom helped arrange a predatory, “hard money” loan that has been sucking up his residuals from six movies while his business manager and lawyer were still getting their cut from his share of the movies.
Bloom and the Management Group “structured the loan, without the legally required disclosures to Mr. Depp, as a vehicle to provide themselves with immediate priority to millions of dollars of voidable contingency fees tied to the success of Mr. Depp’s film residuals,” all before Mr. Depp received a cent, according to the complaint filed in Los Angeles.
Bloom didn’t immediately return a call for comment on the allegations.
After Depp sued his former business managers in January for mismanagement and negligence, the Beverly Hills-based Management Group fired back, claiming the actor repeatedly ignored their advice that his $2-million-a-month lifestyle, including $30,000 just for wine, wasn’t sustainable.
Depp’s over-the-top outlays have included a 45-acre chateau in the South of France, a chain of islands in the Bahamas, a 150-foot (46-meter) luxury yacht, art works by Andy Warhol and Gustav Klimt, 70 collectible guitars, 40 full-time employees around the world and a specially made cannon that he used to blast the ashes of Hunter Thompson over Aspen, Colorado, according to his former business managers.
The case is Depp v. Bloom Hergott Diemer Rosenthal LaViolettte Feldman Schenkman & Goodman LLP, BC680066, California Superior Court, Los Angeles County (Los Angeles).
