Amber Heard's attorneys ask that the verdict in the Johnny Depp defamation case be overturned
Key Takeaways:
- The actress and her ex-husband Johnny Depp are involved in a defamation dispute, and Amber Heard's lawyers are attempting to appeal or overturn the judge's ruling from last month.
- The Aquaman star's defense team also claimed that one of the jurors who took part in the trial was not properly vetted.
In the defamation case involving the actress and her ex-husband Johnny Depp, Amber Heard's attorneys attempt to appeal or overturn the judge's decision from last month.
The Aquaman actress' legal team contended that the verdict was not adequately supported by the evidence in a 43-page document submitted to a Virginia court on Friday.
According to one accusation, Heard's team disputes Depp's assertion that he lost his role in the Pirates of the Caribbean movie series because of an opinion piece Heard wrote for the Washington Post, for which she stated she was molested but did not name the perpetrator.
Depp "proceeded purely on a defamation by implication approach, abandoning any claims that Ms. Heard's words were genuinely incorrect," according to Heard's legal team.
The defense team for the Aquaman star also said that one of the jurors who participated in the trial was not thoroughly screened. The person called to appear in court was born in 1945, but Heard's team contends that the person who served was much younger.
The juror, designated Juror 15 in the document, "was undoubtedly born after 1945. He appears to have been born in 1970, according to information readily available to the public, "the movement indicates.
In his lawsuit against Heard, 36, in reaction to her 2018 op-ed about stepping forward as a survivor of domestic abuse, Depp prevailed in all three of his defamation allegations last month.
Due to a Virginia rule that caps punitive damages, Heard will only be required to pay $10.35 million of the $15 million damages that the jury awarded Depp (the judge reduced the amount).
Heard also received $2 million in compensation for her counterclaims against Depp. According to the actress ' lawyer, heard would "definitely" appeal the judgment against her.
Heard previously referred to the decision as a "setback" for women and expressed her "fear" that it would result in further "silencing" of survivors who want to come forward. (Depp, on the other side, has claimed that he never touched Heard and charged her with physically assaulting him.)
Ben Chew, the head of Depp's legal team, responded to Heard's team's petition by telling Courthouse News that the appeal is "what we expected, just lengthier, no more substantive."