Mr. Depp, by his own admission, often had no idea what was occurring in his bank accounts and would regularly sign whatever documents the Management Group put before him, without bothering to read what they said, on the assumption that his financial adviser “was behaving as a loyal fiduciary and prudent steward of his funds and finances,” his lawsuit asserts.

And this is where the Trump administration comes in, because that word — fiduciary — is at the heart of a battle raging within the federal government over how much responsibility we ought to bear in managing our own finances, and how much we should trust the people giving us advice. (Fair warning: The next few paragraphs are wonky, but I promise we’ll get back to Johnny Depp.)

In 2015, President Barack Obama asked the federal government to force most of the nation’s financial advisers — those people who tell us which stocks to buy for our 401(k)’s — to abide by what’s known as the fiduciary standard, a set of rules that would require advisers to give their clients the best possible advice (rather than, say, advice that pays those advisers the highest fees). “It’s a very simple principle,” Mr. Obama said at the time. “You want to give financial advice, you’ve got to put your client’s interests first.”

For most financial advisers, becoming a fiduciary was no big deal, because they had been giving good advice anyway. For instance, the investment firm Merrill Lynch said it would voluntarily hold its retirement advisers to the new standard. “We view the Department of Labor Fiduciary Rule as a positive step for the industry and great news for investors,” reads a company web page.

Other investment firms, however, were less enthusiastic about the new rules and began furious attacks. Their objections ranged from the ridiculous (suggesting that tens of thousands of financial advisers would retire en masse to protest the new rule) to the legitimate (profits of some advisers are likely to fall, and the fees paid by some investors may rise under the new rule; what’s more, there will most likely be some lawsuits against a small number of advisers as everyone tries to figure out how the new rules work).