Lil Wayne Uses Johnny Depp To Fight His Ex-Lawyer in $20 Million Legal Battle

Lil Wayne is using Johnny Depp to argue why he deserves $20 million dollars from his former lawyer.

According to court documents obtained by The Blast, the rapper has head back to court in the case he brought against his former attorney, Ronald Sweeney.

In the case, he accuses Sweeney of overcharging him for years and taking a huge cut of all his deals. Wayne has claimed Sweeney’s law license was suspended at one point.

In newly filed court documents, Wayne points to a recent victory Johnny Depp scored in court. Depp is suing his own former lawyer for $30 million in a separate ongoing case.

Recently, Depp was able to convince a judge the oral contract he had with his lawyer was invalid.

Wayne is now using Depp's victory from the separate case in court papers, in an attempt to argue why his case against Sweeney should continue on.

Wayne’s motion reads, “Sweeney is pursuing Plaintiff for millions of dollars in additional fees under the voided agreement. But that pursuit is doomed."

He continued, "A California court, in a factually similar and widely-publicized dispute between Johnny Depp and the law firm that represented him since 1999 under an oral contingency fee agreement, has already ruled that once the oral agreement is voided, the attorney’s claim is limited to a reasonable fee under quantum meruit. The court did not find that Depp’s claims expired because he waited too long, which Defendants argue here.”

The rapper is hoping Depp's win in court will convince the judge in his case.

Earlier this year, Lil Wayne sued Sweeney seeking $20 million in damages. He accused his lawyer of overcharging him and taking a 10 percent cut of all his deals instead of the industry standard of 5 percent.

Wayne claimed Sweeney tried to get greedy towards the end and take an additional 10 percent off all his Young Money profits but he shut that down. He also claimed Sweeney didn’t even represent him in the battle with Birdman over the ‘Carter V’, saying he brought in outside counsel, who Wayne said took a 23 percent cut of his Cash Money settlement and 15 percent cut of a separate deal with Universal Music.

Sweeney, who represented the rapper from 2005 until 2018, fired back arguing he made Wayne upwards of a hundred million while they worked together.

The lawyer believed the lawsuit filed by Wayne is nothing more than a “campaign by Carter’s other advisors to avoid” paying him the money owed.

He also claimed to have made himself available 24 hours a day for Wayne and traveled to him for legal work. Sweeney asked the court to dismiss the case.

The case is ongoing.

After being sued by Wayne, Sweeney went and sued Mack Maine (real name Jermaine Preyan) and Cortez Bryant (the rapper’s manager) accusing them of conspiring to get him fired.

The lawyer claims he became Wayne's protector from his record label, personal managers, other unsavory and unethical professionals, Wayne's childhood friends and even "from Lil Wayne himself."

He says despite all this, in September 2018, "Lil Wayne was induced to terminate his relationship with Sweeney based on false and misleading allegations by Mack and Cortez, both childhood friends of Lil Wayne. Mack and Cortez falsely told Lil Wayne, among other things, that Sweeney was improperly collecting fees to which he was not entitled and that the 10% fee Sweeney charged was exorbitant and against Lil Wayne’s best interests."

Sweeney accuses the two of a conspiracy that was motivated by greed and a desire to collect for themselves the money Sweeney was collecting for his work with Wayne.

In the lawsuit, Sweeney claims Wayne told him to fire Cortez because he believed his company had been trying to collect more of Drake's royalties than he was owed. He says after that, Cortez conspired with Mack to "drive a wedge between Lil Wayne and Sweeney" by making false and misleading statement to Wayne about Sweeney. He says their goal was to get him out of the picture completely.

Sweeney accuses Maine and Bryant of ruining his relationship with Wayne, along with causing him to have to defend himself in the $20 million lawsuit brought against him by the rapper.

Sweeney sued for defamation and is seeking unspecified damages for the millions he believes he lost out from future Wayne commissions. This case is also ongoing.