Ben Atkin comments on recent celebrity court cases, including Johnny Depp’s widely reported libel case against The Sun newspaper and the ongoing dispute between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, in HELLO! Magazine.
- Amber Heard vs Johnny Depp – "the quintessential celebrity divorce-adjacent case. Depp had an adverse ruling in the UK proceedings but changed his fortunes overseas, with help from a US jury and the Court of public opinion, mainly aired through TikTok. The first case of its kind to have that kind of following and discourse on short-form-video social media."
- Nicki Minaj vs Tracy Chapman – "as we have seen with Ed Sheeran’s recent UK litigation, identifying the origin of a musical idea can be difficult. Detailed record keeping is invaluable (as boring and creatively prohibitive as that may be). It was a mistake to sample Chapman’s music without permission and this case showed how costly those types of mistakes can be."
- Blake Lively vs Justin Baldoni – "a PR dispute gone horribly wrong. The jury is still out on who is right or wrong, but it has been fascinating seeing the groundswell of support for Lively in the early days of the allegations, to public support now significantly in Baldoni’s favour - arising from the narrative that there were attempts by Lively to strong-arm a project away from him. The recent entanglement of Taylor Swift adds a new dimension to the dispute due to her very high profile."
"These cases show that the court of public opinion pendulum swings easily and the key players can go from hero to villain in an instant. Given how decided a public audience can be, particularly when cancelling an individual, that shift is stark and surprising to witness. It reiterates how careful high profile individuals must be with publicly aired disputes and the litigation that is brought to address them."
Extracts of Ben's comments were published in HELLO! Magazine on 23 May 2025.
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