Johnny Depp Settles On-Set Assault Lawsuit

Johnny Depp has reached a settlement with a crew member who accused the actor of assaulting him when they worked together on the 2018 thriller City of Lies.

On Monday, Gregg “Rocky” Brooks, a location manager on the film, and Depp managed to reach this agreement just weeks before the case was set to go to civil trial in Los Angeles, per court documents obtained by People. As they were able to settle the suit, Judge Holly J. Fujie agreed to delay the trial from July 25 to January 5 of next year. According to People, if Depp fulfills all of the requirements of the settlement, the case will be dismissed. The court filing did not reveal what specific things Depp will have to accomplish before then.

According to the original lawsuit filed in 2018, Brooks claims that while filming a scene for City of Lies on April 13, 2017, Depp became angry after he had to inform the actor that they could only film one more exterior shot that night due to permit requirements. Brooks says that as he approached an LAPD officer for protection, Depp pursued him, allegedly punching him twice in the ribs after screaming, “Who the fuck are you? You have no right to tell me what to do.” The location manager then claims that when he didn’t react to Depp’s punches, the actor said he’d give him “$100,000 to punch me in the face right now.” According to the lawsuit, Depp was eventually escorted from the scene by his own bodyguards.

Back in 2019, when the trial was originally scheduled to begin, Brooks’s lawyer Pat Harris told Variety, “We obviously recognize that in the hierarchy of Hollywood, Johnny Depp is on top and the location managers are somewhere mid-level or toward the bottom. In any confrontation between the two of them, no matter who started it, no matter who’s responsible, Johnny Depp is going to come out on top and our guy is going to come out damaged.” 

Depp’s lawyer at the time, Adam Waldman, told TheWrap in 2018 that Depp “never touched the person suing him, as over a dozen witnesses present will attest. In a court filing we have generally denied all claims and we will fight these latest sham allegations.” And the attorney also told Variety in 2019 that they were planning on lodging their own complaint in response to the allegations. “As soon as the evidence defeats Mr. Brooks in trial we will immediately launch malicious prosecution claims against his attorneys,” Waldman said. “What Mr. Brooks lawyer terms ‘scorched earth’ is actually known as ‘Justice.’”

City of Lies, a movie about the LAPD’s investigation into the unsolved murders of The Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur, was slated to be released in September 2018. However, according to Deadline at the time, its distributor pulled the film from its release schedule.