As the fallout from Amber Heard’s defamation case against her ex-husband Johnny Depp continues to play out, the actress has filed a motion asking for a new trial or a reversal of the verdict that was already made.
In June, a jury decided that Aquaman star Heard, who is 36 years old, was to blame for slandering Pirates of the Caribbean star Depp, who is 59 years old.
The actor, who is best known for his role in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, said that Heard’s opinion piece on domestic violence, which was published in The Washington Post in 2018, falsely portrayed him.
Even though Heard didn’t mention Depp by name in the article, Depp, who was nominated for an Oscar for his role in Edward Scissorhands, said that it had hurt his career and reputation “significantly.”
After hearing evidence and testimony for a total of six weeks, the jury came to a decision. They said that Heard had to pay Depp £8.3 million in damages as compensation.
After Depp asked Heard for $50 million in damages for what he was said to have done wrong, Heard filed a counterclaim against him for $100 million in damages.
Now, Heard and her legal team have filed an appeal, saying that the trial was “unfair” because some therapy notes in which the actress talked about being abused by Depp were not allowed to be shown.
In the 68-page document, which was written at the end of November, Heard’s lawyers say that the court “improperly stopped the jury from considering several times when Heard told a medical professional about Depp’s abuse.”
It continued:
If not reversed, the trial court’s exclusion of contemporaneous reports of domestic abuse to medical professionals will make it more difficult for other abuse victims to prove allegations of abuse, and likely deter them from coming forward.
That holding, if allowed to stand, undoubtedly will have a chilling effect on other women who wish to speak about abuse involving powerful men.
Her lawyers also said that the verdict should be appealed and changed because Heard did not slander Depp in her article because she told the truth about what happened.
They said:
This case also should never have gone to trial because another court had already concluded that Depp abused Heard on multiple occasions.
After Depp filed this case, the United Kingdom High Court of Justice ruled in a separate defamation action brought by Depp that Heard’s abuse allegations were true.
Heard’s legal team, which is made up of different lawyers than the ones who first represented her, also said that the trial, which took place in Virginia, should have been in California, where the couple used to live together. The first group of lawyers who took on Heard’s case at the beginning has since left the case.
The Washington Post’s servers are in the state of Virginia. In the filing, it says that this was a “completely inconvenient forum that had nothing to do with Depp or his claims.”
Depp’s lawyers have also filed an appeal, saying that the one count of defamation against Heard for which he was found guilty and given a jail sentence was “incorrect.”
Adam Waldman, Johnny Depp’s lawyer, said that Heard’s claims of domestic abuse were “an ambush, a hoax.” This was found to be false and hurtful to Heard. Even though Heard lost the trial as a whole, the jury gave her $2 million because Adam Waldman had spread false information about her.
Depp’s attorneys wrote:
The jury’s emphatic favourable verdict on all three defamatory statements alleged in his complaint fully vindicated Mr Depp and restored his reputation.
Both appeals will be heard by a panel of judges, and then, depending on whose lawyers are more unhappy with the results, either Depp or Heard could take the case to the state’s highest court.
