Law&Crime Sidebar - Johnny Depp's Lawyer Drops Kanye West for Anti-Semitic Remarks

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Starting point is 00:00:35 will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. But we need to give him credit for being an anti-Semite, right? I mean, we need to just acknowledge, we need to say, okay, we believe you. I believe that you're an anti-semit. I think we need to publicly say we can't condone anti-Semitism and you express that and that's not okay. Just as quickly as it was reported that Kanye West had hired Johnny Depp's legal team. It's now being reported that that relationship is over. Media and First Amendment law expert George Freeman joins to discuss what could be happening with Yeh and what we can expect with his business and legal

Starting point is 00:01:21 troubles. Welcome to Sidebar presented by law and crime. I'm Jesse Weber. Jewish people that I'm talking about don't have to understand, and that is that privilege that I'm not going to allow. When I wore the White Lives Matter t-shirt, the Jewish underground media mafia already started attacking me. All right, it's time to talk right now about Kanye West or Ye. And as I'm sure you know, the rapper has gotten into a whole mess of controversy. He has made arguably anti-Semitic comments tweeting, going down. death con on Jewish people. You guys have toyed with me and tried to blackball anyone who ever opposes your agenda. As a result of that, he had his Twitter account locked out. He went on a

Starting point is 00:02:07 podcast saying that Jewish media has blocked him out. He made waves when he said that the death of George Floyd was not caused by the actions of police officers, but rather that Floyd died of fentanyl. This resulted in the family of George Floyd announcing that they plan to file a $250 million lawsuit against Yeh for harassment, misappropriation, defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress. He's been dropped by his talent agencies, talent agency, I should say, creative artist agency. Most recently, Balenciaga, that he had this collaboration with on Gap Line. They've officially dropped him.

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Starting point is 00:03:51 you know what the commercial break might not be for everyone but hey at least it's free so he is not in great shape from a business point of view and from a legal point of view and given all this he officially all the reports that he officially hired camille vaskes and the brown rudnick law firm to represent him now why does that name sound so familiar he slipped up there didn't you misheard you let it slip out that TMZ had been alerted to your filing of the domestic violence restraining order, didn't you? I disagree. That's not what I'm talking about.

Starting point is 00:04:24 TMZ is the same outlet that you released the video of Mr. Depp attacking the kitchen cabinets the day before this deposition was taken, wasn't it? I didn't do that. I don't know how to do that. The copyright to that video now, doesn't it? I have no idea what TMZ owns. Did they pay you for that? I never got paid for it because I had nothing to do with that.

Starting point is 00:04:42 So TMZ was just lucky in getting the inside scooped your divorce from Mr. Depp, huh? I have no idea. It is not. area of expertise. I wouldn't even know how to do that. And also, what does that get me? If I wanted to leap things about Johnny, I could have done that in a much more successful way, in a bigger way, for years. Now when you were extorting him for $7 million. I got a fraction of what I was entitled to in the state of California, by the way. Ah, yes, because she, along with Ben Chu and team, represented Johnny Depp in his infamous trial against Amber Hurd and successfully won a judgment against

Starting point is 00:05:19 her. But now, it is being reported that that relationship has also ended. I'm joined right now by George Freeman. He's the executive director of the Media Law Resource Center. He's a former assistant general counsel of the New York Times Company. He is a well-known speaker on media and First Amendment issues, and he was the William J. Brennan visiting professor at the Columbia Journalism School. And he also taught at New York University and CUNY's Graduate School of Journalism. George, Pleasure to have you here on Sidebar. Thanks for taking the time. Thank you very much. Nice to be here. Let's start with choosing your lawyer because apparently there were these reports that he, you know,

Starting point is 00:05:57 wanted to hire Camille Vasquez and Brown Rodnick, but they have since dropped him because apparently the reports are, this comes from page six and TMZ, that they were willing to work with him, but he only if he retracted his comments and he chose not to do that. What's your reaction to that? I think that that was a good move on the part of the law firm. I think the law. law firm probably thinks that they will be suffering if they take him as a client under those circumstances. And so they decided that unless he retracts, they don't want any part of them, probably because of fine pressure from other clients. And that makes total sense to me. And that's the way the marketplace should really react. So I think that's good.

Starting point is 00:06:37 Why he chose her in the first place is questionable. I mean, she's the lawyer de jour because they just won a huge judgment in the Johnny Depp case. That doesn't necessarily mean she's the best possible plaintiff's lawyer out there, or defense lawyer, actually, is what he's looking for. But that's neither here nor there, I think. You know, celebrities tend to choose celebrity lawyers. So I understand that, whether that's what I would have counseled. It was a different question. Well, success breeds more, you know, more clients. That's typical what happens in such a high profile case like Johnny Depp. I guess the question is, if we focus on what their potential defense was for him, retract your statements, move from there. Would that have helped him in any way? Would that have

Starting point is 00:07:17 and successful in any way. And we'll get into all the problems he's having, but retracting statements is a first step. It's not a bad idea in terms of PR. As a legal matter, it's not going to matter. But I think the legal case against them actually is fairly weak. I think the PR case against him is very strong. I mean, what he said is idiotic. It's heinous. It's harmful. It's untrue. It doesn't make any sense. That being said, you can't just sue for every statement like that or the courts would be filled with people suing for insults against them. We live in a society here in America where you're allowed to say these things, and we hope that the marketplace will even things out somewhat, as seems to be happening in this case. So in a sense, the marketplace is working

Starting point is 00:08:03 because of all the things you mentioned, that he's been deplatformed, that his agency is leaving him. Now his lawyer is leaving him. Hopefully his fans might even leave him. But that's we look to to remedy stupid speech, harmful speech, not so much lawsuits, because after all, what you think of is defamation, but he's defaming someone who's dead and basically dead people don't have a right to sue. I was going to ask you that. So let's get into the lawsuit that was filed by George Floyd's family. You can't defame a dead person. But having said that, If they're filing under several theories of intentional infliction of emotional distress, right? And they're on top of defamation and they're also filing it for harassment and misappropriation.

Starting point is 00:08:51 Is there anything that he should be concerned about it? And also, if you can't address why the defamation claim doesn't work, because somebody might say, okay, maybe you can't defame a dead person, but the family felt the impact of what he said. That's a fair point. But our law is that it really has to be reputational harm. and since the person is dead, he doesn't know anything about what people are saying about him, so he's not harmed by it because he's dead. And so case closed, there's no defamation case.

Starting point is 00:09:21 I think what first comes to mind as a substitute is, as you mentioned, correctly, intentional infliction of emotional distress. That's not the easiest case to make. It has to really be something that I think is like heinous to civilized society. So it's a very kind of harsh step. or anyone could sue for emotional distress at the slightest provocation. Whether this meets that standard or not is a good question. It's not a slam dunk by any means, but it seems to me it's in the ballpark.

Starting point is 00:09:51 So at least it's a possibility, which he obviously is now worried about, hence is going to get a lawyer. I guess the question is, in terms of his lost business opportunities, put aside Twitter for a second because I know he's trying to buy parlor as a different mechanism. for him to communicate his message. Him being dropped by Balenciaga, you know, I think the controversy first started when he was wearing the White Lives Matter shirt to a fashion show. He then did the Tucker Carlson interview. He makes these anti-Semitic comments.

Starting point is 00:10:22 He's dropped by Balenciaga. There's pressure on Adidas to drop him as well. We know his lawyer has dropped him or his potential lawyer. We know his agent dropped him. Does he have any legal recourse? I mean, is it fair that he had these business relationships and they just drop him because of something he said? Well, that's a good question. And obviously it depends on whatever contracts he has, which I'm not privy to. On the other hand, I would think, I would hope that courts would really, really bend over backwards not to enforce contractual contracts unless they're awfully ironclad. But most of them have some out for controversy or for poor, you know, bad behavior and moral behavior. And hopefully I would think that courts would be pretty flexible in terms of allowing the

Starting point is 00:11:08 agencies, the advertisers to get out of a deal with him because it's going to redound to their detriment, not to their benefit, which is what the point of the contract and his being a spokesman is in the first place. So you'd think that, I mean, this is the way the market should work. You know, people say, oh, how can you boycott a TV show that you don't like? Well, that's all you can do. That's the only asset you have left. So to my view, under the First Amendment, that's the public speaking. And that should be how this all works. That's a good point because he has tremendous power and influence. He might be dwindling right now, but that could be a way to combat that.

Starting point is 00:11:43 That's the only way. You boycott his product. The power and influence too in the end more than he does. That's the idea. Exactly right. And before I let you go, I do want to ask you this a little bit of a hypothetical. The language that he's using, my opinion, is very dangerous. If God forbid someone, a Jewish person should be attacked.

Starting point is 00:11:59 And the person who does it says, I was following what Kanye West tweeted or was following what Kanye West said. Could Kanye West, or Yeh, could he face any legal jeopardy there? Yeah, no, that's a very good question. And the answer is that in our country, it's harder for a victim like that to sue than probably anywhere else in the world. The Supreme Court ruled on this, I think, in the late 60s. And basically, there's only liability if what he said would incite imminent lawless action. And it has to be imminent, which means it has to be kind of pretty soon after the statement is made, and it has to be kind of a direct link from the statement to the violent or lawless action. So those are tough requirements, and that's what would be needed.

Starting point is 00:12:48 So it's possible, but it's a hard case to make out and only under very narrow set of facts. George Freeman, thank you so much for taking the time. We really appreciate it. I think this was a terrific insight into how First Amendment law works, when we think about what could be the repercussions. for yay. Appreciate you taking the time, sir. Thank you. My pleasure. Thank you very much for having me. And thanks so much, everybody, for joining us here on Sidebar. Please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast. I'm Jesse Weber. We'll speak to you next time. You can binge all episodes of this long crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

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Law&Crime Sidebar - Johnny Depp's Lawyer Drops Kanye West for Anti-Semitic Remarks

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