Ok, spoken to someone & trotted through legislation & cases, and here is the law in relation to statements made outside of proceedings submitted as evidence. It appears Nicol J has treated Heard's recordings under the hearsay rule defined by the Criminal Justice Act, 2003.

This Act outlines various rules in relation to submitting statements that can be used to incriminate someone & so must be treated very carefully. The base common law rule is any confession you make against yourself can be used as evidence against you (PACE 1984, s76).

However, if others make allegations against you and these are outside of court, then they must meet a series of tests set out in R v Riat. If they don't meet the tests that are set in sequence, the evidence is inadmissible. If they do, then they are.

BUT, they can only be admitted if they are capable of being tested by the jury. This is up to the judge to determine, but the purpose of the hearsay rule is primarily so that the jury may ascertain all the probable evidence in order to meet a safe conclusion (Riat).

An exception to the hearsay rule, however is provided by CJA 2003, s115. This defines a "statement" for the purposes of "hearsay evidence" (s114). A statement is anything stated that is ONLY made in order "to have someone believe it" (115 ss2). This is confirmed in R v Twist.

Therefore, any confession (about any party) that is not made in order to have someone else believe it is not [potentially incriminating] hearsay for the purposes of ANY legislation governing the hearsay rule (Twist). Furthermore, any such confession is admissible as to character.

Finally, any confession not falling under the s115 rule is deemed to be impliedly true by virtue of the fact the person making the confession was not concerned about convincing anyone else (R v Y).

So it appears that Nicol has 1. Introduced a criminal law test into civil proceedings. Despite actually specifically saying "these are civil proceedings" (at para 41). 2. Incorrectly applied the hearsay rule to discount Heard's admissions she attacked Johnny Depp herself.

3. Completely ignored the leading authority (R v Y) which specifically states non-hearsay confessions are to be treated as impliedly true. Which means, of course, that Amber Heard admitting on recording to beating Johnny Depp should have been weighed up as evidence against her.

And do please note Nicol never once referred to any of these myriad pieces of legislation or authorities for his reasoning. He just declared a brand new principle that has no basis in law at all. Because he wanted to use his judgment to assist Amber Heard. #JusticeForJohnnyDepp