You know, Captain Jack Sparrow. Captain Jack Sparrows, let didn't see your ship, Captain. I'm in the market as it were. You are, without doubt the worst part I've heard of. But you have heard of, Yes we have. Johnny Depp's role as the charming and rogueish Captain Jack Sparrow earned Walt Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean franchise about four point five billion dollars in box office sales. During his nearly twenty years of stardom. Depp developed a swashbuckling lifestyle to match,
with upkeep of about two million dollars a month. Depth's fortune has vanished, and he's fighting back in court. In January, he sued his former business managers, and now he's suing his entertainment lawyer for malpractice. He wants thirty million dollars in contingency fees paid over the past eighteen years returned. Joining us is David Bissinger, founding partner at Bissinger Ashman and WILLIAMS. Dave. There are seven claims in this suit.
What stands out to you as the most important? The first claim as uh, the big one, and that's breach of fiduciary duty. That's the claim that will make this case impossible, I think to resolve in a summary judgment. Motion are certainly not an emotion to dismiss UH, and so the parties will either have to settle it or
go to trial. Exclaim that a little bit more well, breach of fiduciary duty claim imposes a pawn UH both the managers in the prior depth case and now the lawyers and the one that was just filed UH this week. Basically a duty of utmost good faith UH and trust and confidence UH. In fact, there's some famous Texas fiduciary duty defense lawyers that describe a jury charge for breach of fiduciary duty as the UH infamous Mother Teresa instruction.
In other words, the defendant in Texas, for example, will have to prove he complied with his fiduciary duties, thus reversing the burden to proof UH. The California jury instruction appears to put the burden on the plaintiff, but nevertheless imposes an enormously high burden on someone who does operate as a fiduciary, as both lawyers and agents do well. David's what is depth saying that his lawyer did wrong. Well,
there's a variety of things. Uh. In some ways you could call it allowing him to commit uh financial or economic suicide uh in the sense of not protecting him from his own spending habits. But in fairness to Depth, there is a especially a hard money loan that was was executed by his management company TMG, apparently with the involvement of the lawyers. Hard money loan, UH is a basically a almost like a loan sharking kind of a loan. It's a high risk, high intra loan in which you
pledge collateral, but it's it's not a mortgage. And in this instance, uh Depth pledged apparently his movie residuals. And according to Depth's complaint, in any event, the loan made no economic sense because the value of depths residuals, say, are in the range of fifteen million dollars per year, which the expenses, the fees and the interest of the loan are far in excess of that, at least according
to Depth. Uh. No. That's and then the second piece is the contingent these contingent fee arrangements by which over time the lawyers at the law firm as well as at the management company. Because the management company UH managers were also lawyers, earned contingent fees UH allegedly without them being reduced to writing and under California law, like the law of Texas and many other states, UH, that makes
the agreement avoidable. Agreement Dave in the complaint death claims in one example that he was presented only with the signature pages of the loan, and he trusted his advisors had his best interests in mind, and he signed the loan documents not appreciating it. And you have these sort of claims that he relied upon his lawyers because he didn't know about these things that were going on. How doesn't attorney's fiduciary duty compare to the duty of his
business managers? You know, really, legally, June, they're not much different. UH. And I think really the issue for both the management case and the law firm case are going to come down to the factual UH components that sort of the characterization and the overall context of those relationships. UH. In both instances, I suspect that the communications were similar mostly probably we're gonna have a lot of emails, will have
some meetings, and phone calls. UH. There is apparently, according to the business management case filed back in February, a former employee of the management company UH that will testify against the management company. And so it's as to the dirty things or the shady stuff I think of the term used in the complaint that the management UH fellas
wanted her to do that she refused to do. And so really it's going to come down to these factual issues again, which is why it's so much more likely to lead to a trial than many other types of cases, and that will be a trial that many people will watch. Thanks so much for joining us. That's David Bissinger, founding partner at Bissinger Ashman and Williams coming up on Bloomberg Law. The jury is weigh in the case against former HSBC
currency trader Mark Johnson for front running. We'll listen to some parts of the recorded phone calls at the heart of the prosecution's case.