The argument of Mr. Depp was that the case had nothing to do with the broad protections for the First Amendment speech. Instead, he insisted, it was the credibility of the accuser. “The First Amendment does not protect the lies that hurt and defame people,” said Mr. Depp to the jury when the trial ended.
Several lawyers said they were surprised by the result, especially because Mr. Depp lost a similar case in Britain, which has much lower legal standards for public figures suing for defamation. A key difference, said George Freeman, executive director of the Media Law Resource Center and a former lawyer for The New York Times, was that a judge decided the case in Britain while a jury sided with Mr. Freeman. Depp in the United States.
“A jury decides what a jury decides, and often there’s no further explanation,” Freeman said.
The result was even more curious, Mr. Freeman added, because the jury also sided with Ms. Heard in a case in which he claimed that Mr. Depp had defamed her by blaming her for damaging the couple’s attic.
“When one side is false, the other is true,” Freeman said. “It seems a bit inconsistent to give awards to both.”
Johnny Depp’s defamation case against Amber Heard
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In the courtroom. Defamation lawsuit between former married actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard has just concluded in Fairfax County Circuit Court in Virginia. Here’s what you need to know about the case:
The opinion of Ms. Heard. The demand of Mr. Depp came forward in response to an opinion piece that Ms. Heard wrote for The Washington Post in 2018 in which he described himself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse.” Although she did not mention her ex-husband’s name, he and her lawyers have argued that it clearly referred to their relationship.
Domestic abuse claims. At the 2020 trial, Ms Heard accused her ex-husband of assaulting her for the first time in 2013 after they started dating, and detailed other cases in which she was slapped and beaten. he nodded and threw her to the ground. Since then, Mr. Depp has accused him of punching him, kicking him and throwing objects at him.
The verdict. After a six-week trial, the jury found that Mr. Depp was defamed by Ms. Heard in his opinion piece, but also that she had been defamed by one of her lawyers. Mr. Depp received $ 15 million in compensatory and punitive damages, but the judge limited the total punitive damages according to legal limits to a total of $ 10.35 million. The jury awarded Ms. Heard $ 2 million in damages.
One implication of the split jury’s decision is that the law, because of its complexities, may not do what people expect it to do: be an arbitrator of the type of disputes that he / she said arise from accusation such as sexual assault.
In other similar defamation cases, the publisher has also been part of the lawsuit. First Amendment experts who are concerned about the use of defamation lawsuits in an increasingly polarized climate, especially against news organizations, said the fact that The Post was not named as a party in the case of Sr. Depp probably facilitated his victory.
If the Post had been sued, the trial would probably have focused more on the ways in which defamation laws can be abused, said RonNell Andersen Jones, a law professor at the University of Utah.