Actor Amber Heard’s lawyers have requested that the sentence against her in the defamation duel case with ex-husband Johnny Depp be set aside.
Heard, who was found responsible for three defamation charges in June, said in a 43-page memorandum that the jury’s verdict should be released – and with it a prize of more than $ 10 million – on the grounds that no was supported by evidence.
Represented by attorney Elaine Bredehoft at trial, Heard argued, among other things, that it was false for Depp to claim that he lost his role to Pirates of the Caribbean due to statements made by Heard in a Washington opinion piece Post.
Depp “proceeded solely on a theory of defamation by implication, abandoning any claim that Ms. Heard’s statements were actually false,” his attorney argued in a motion filed Friday.
Heard also claims the jury’s award against her was excessive, after it was handed down after a split verdict found that she and Depp had defamed each other.
In an email to Courthouse News, Depp’s chief lawyer, Ben Chew, dismissed the motion to dismiss it as “what we expected, only longer, not more substantial.”
Heard also claims that a jury he served during the seven-week trial was not properly examined by court officials because his indicated year of birth was 1945.
The jury, identified in the presentation as Jury 15, “was clearly born after 1945. Publicly available information shows that he appears to have been born in 1970,” the motion said.
“This discrepancy raises the question of whether jury 15 actually received a subpoena to be a juror and was properly examined by the court to form part of the jury.”
The court clerk is required to verify the identity of the jurors, but in this case, “it appears that their identity could not be verified,” the motion adds.
Judge Penney Azcarate has indicated that she is not inclined to schedule further hearings in the case. At the last legal meeting, on June 24, Azcarate put the final sentence on the court record after Bredehoft asked for more hearings.
Azcarate bluntly told Heartd’s attorney that if he wanted to appeal the seven-person jury’s verdict, he would have to file motions in court.
Azcarate also informed Bredehoft that the Aquaman star will have to offer a $ 8.35 million bond with an annual interest rate of 6% before any appeal goes ahead. Heard representatives have said he has no money to pay Depp or meet bail.
With the $ 10 million sentence against Heard, and a $ 2 million sentence against Depp for a single defamation charge, now on in court, there seems to be little chance for the parties to reach an out-of-court settlement.
Following the verdict, Depp’s lawyers hinted that the Pirates star might be willing to give up his share of the award. But Heard has since repeated many of his claims against him, even during an interview on NBC, suggesting that the matter, at least for Heard, is far from resolved.