Actor Amber Heard intends to appeal the unanimous jury’s decision that she defamed ex-husband Johnny Depp.
Background
To give a little background the case was centered around an opinion piece that Amber Heard wrote for The Washington Post in 2018. The title of the article was “I spoke up against sexual violence — and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change“.
In the aftermath of the article, Johnny Depp filed a defamation suit for $50 million against his ex-wife Amber Heard. While Depp wasn’t named in the piece, he claimed that allegations made it difficult to land movie roles.
In return Heard intends to file a $100 million countersuit against Depp. In this suit, she argued she was defamed by his press agent who described her allegations as “an abuse hoax”.
The verdict
On Wednesday, a seven-bench jury ruled that Heard defamed Depp and awarded him $10 million in compensatory damages. He was also awarded $5 million in punitive damages. Whereas Amber Heard was awarded $2m in compensatory damages.
One of Heard’s Attorneys, Elaine Charlson Bredehoft, told NBC, “Today shows that Depp`s team was able to suppress an enormous amount of evidence that was allowed in a libel case in Britain, which Depp lost”.
Johnny Depp sued a British tabloid for calling him a “wife-beater”. A London High Court judge found Depp abused Heard at least a dozen times, but Heard`s lawyers were not allowed to tell the jury that in the Virginia case, Charlson Bredehoft added.
Furthermore, he said, “So what did Depp`s team learn from this? Demonize Amber, and suppress the evidence”. “She was demonized here. A number of things were allowed in this court that should not have been allowed, and it caused the jury to be confused”.
During the trial, Depp claimed that he never hit or sexually abused Heard. He in turn accused Amber Heard of becoming violent during the relationship.