Depp says heard hit him with a 'haymaker'

Jill LawlessAAP Johnny Depp has accused Amber Heard of hitting him with a "haymaker" punch during an altercation near the end of their volatile marriage, as the star wrapped up

testimony in his libel suit against a British tabloid newspaper. Depp says the fight came after Heard's 30th birthday party, and hours after he learned that his former business managers

had absconded with hundreds of millions of dollars. The Hollywood star is suing News Group Newspapers, publisher of The Sun, and the paper's executive editor Dan Wootton, over an April

2018 article that called him a "wife-beater". He strongly denies abusing Heard. Depp, 57, and Heard, 34, met on the set of the 2011 comedy The Rum Diary and married in Los Angeles

in 2015. Heard, a model and actor, filed for divorce the following year, and the divorce was finalised in 2017. The actor said just before Heard's 30th birthday party in April 2016 he

attended a meeting and was told his former business managers had "stolen my money". Asked how much was stolen, Depp said "this is a ludicrous amount to have to state,

it's quite embarrassing - apparently I had made $US650 million ($A931 million)", much of it through his involvement with the Pirates of the Caribbean films. Depp added that in

addition to losing the $US650 million he was "$US100 million ($A143 million) in the hole because they had not paid the government my taxes for 17 years". Depp and his former

business managers settled a legal dispute over the alleged fraud in 2018. Depp alleges that after the party he went to bed to read, and Heard began accusing him of ruining her birthday

dinner before throwing a "haymaker" at him. Depp's lawyer David Sherborne asked him to explain the American slang term for judge Andrew Nicol. "A haymaker is a type of a

wild swing, a roundhouse punch. Effective if it reaches the target," Depp said on Monday. "I have come across it," noted the judge. Heard is attending the three-week trial and

is scheduled to give her own version of events later. During five days in the witness box, Depp depicted a tumultuous relationship with Heard during a period when he was trying to kick

drugs and alcohol, and sometimes lapsing. He called the relationship "a crime scene waiting to happen". But he denied Heard's claims that he slapped, hit, headbutted and threw

things at her, and accused the model-actor of compiling a dossier of fake claims against him as an "insurance policy". The Sun's defence relies on a total of 14 allegations

by Heard of Depp's violence between 2013 and 2016, in settings including his private island in the Bahamas, a rented house in Australia and a private jet. GET THE LATEST NEWS FROM

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