Thread by @nickwallis

Hi - I can confirm I will be live-tweeting the Depp v NGN appeal application hearing tomorrow.

It will begin at 1000 GMT in Court 71 of Royal Courts of Justice in London. It is being broadcast live, for free on YouTube. Link to follow.

(Court 71 is one of those grim-looking modern courts bolted on to the back of the gothic splendour of the original RCJ buildings where the original Depp v NGN trial was heard. They new courts do tend to have much better acoustics, though.)

I have requested, and hope to receive the parties’ skeleton arguments and any other relevant documentation once the hearing is underway.

The hearing is an application to appeal Mr Justice Nicol’s High Court judgment which found the Sun Newspaper’s allegations that Johnny Depp engaged in domestic violence to be “substantially true”.

Mr Depp’s team will be hoping to successfully adduce new evidence into the appeal application in support of the general grounds of appeal which were filed over Christmas…

(and which you can read here nickwallis.com/courtofappeal - don’t forget to click the pop-up blocker symbol in your menu bar of your browser, it is default on if you are using Safari).

The NGN team will no doubt be seeking to persuade the court that Mr Nicol’s judgment is sound and should stand.

The new evidence will take the form of witness statements. The hearing is listed for two hours. It may overrun. The court may give judgment tomorrow, it might reserve it for a later date, which will not likely be given. Hearings of this nature are rare.

If the court accepts any one of the grounds of appeal (including those grounds affected by the adduction of new evidence via the witness statements) is substantial enough to merit an appeal, it will order one.

There will then be a two or three day appeal hearing at the Court of Appeal at some point in the future, during which Mr Depp’s lawyers will argue the case for a retrial.

If the appeal application is thrown out, that is the end of the road for Mr Depp via the courts in this case in the UK. Mr Nicol’s ruling will stand.

As I have said above, tomorrow’s hearing is being broadcast live on YouTube. Before I give you the link, please note…

“… the re-use, capture, re-editing or distribution of the footage in any form is not permitted.”

If you do choose to do any of the above, you could be done for breach of copyright, defamation or even contempt of court, a potential criminal offence.

Furthermore if you retweet or otherwise share someone else’s edit/broadcast/report of the YouTube feed you could be deep legal doodoo. My advice, particularly for people in the UK, is do not do ANYTHING with tomorrow’s feed, except watch it.

Just so you know - there is an identical feed being sent to broadcasters. The recipients of that feed to have permission to record it and make it part of a report or presentation provided they adhere by strict legal rules (to do with fairness and accuracy).

Well - in fact, this is the specific law:

"11(1) A report or presentation of proceedings that includes a broadcast of a hearing must be fair and accurate having regard to:
 
(a)the overall content of the report or presentation; and

(b) the context in which the broadcast is presented.”

11(2) A broadcast must not be for the purposes of:

(a) a party political broadcast;

(b) advertisement or promotion, except where such advertisement or promotion relates to a report or presentation of proceedings that includes a broadcast;

(c) light entertainment; or

(d) satire.”

Retweeting or resharing reports made by accredited broadcasters I think is legally okay, but I’m not going to do it, just in case. If you are not sure of your position, get legal advice before doing anything.

Here, then, is the link to Court 71’s very own YouTube page: youtube.com/channel/UCvLfI…

Another thing: A court order is being sought which would restrict the public dissemination of certain documents (or elements of certain documents) and...

reporting discussions pertaining to those documents in the hearing tomorrow. It will likely succeed. I suspect this means the public YouTube feed will be switched off whilst these discussions are taking place. I will also not be able to report any element of them.

It’s taken me a good few hours to pull all this information together and I am reasonably certain it is accurate, but please accept my advance apologies for any mistakes.

I have crowdfunded my reporting of the Depp v NGN case - if you would like to make a small contribution to the tip jar to cover the time costs of doing do today or tomorrow, I would be enormously grateful. The link is here:

store29806256.company.site

I realise asking you to make a donation to help me tweet something you can watch live for free on YouTube is a big ask (especially as I suspect plenty of other people are going to be doing exactly the same), but hopefully you’ll find what I’m putting out of some value.

You can use the same link (store29806256.company.site) to buy my forthcoming book if you’re interested - but I am afraid it’s not about Depp v NGN!

See you at 1000 GMT tomorrow.

I've already got something wrong.

The hearing starts at 1030 GMT.

Ace journalism once more.