For six weeks, actor Johnny Depp’s defamation case against ex-wife Amber Heard shocked the nation, offering a rare case of high-profile #MeToo charges and countercharges, including outrageous allegations of physical abuse. . public focus of a courtroom.
On Wednesday, a seven-person jury in Fairfax, Virginia, found that Mr. Depp had been slandered by Ms Heard when she described herself in a 2018 opinion piece in The Washington Post as a “public figure representing domestic abuse”. Mr. Depp received more than $ 10 million in damages.
During the trial, Mr. Depp had fiercely denied the allegations made by Ms. Heard of having subjected her to repeated physical abuse that included punches and blows to the head and several cases of sexual assault. In a statement after the verdict, Mr. Depp thanked the jury, saying “it turned my life around.”
Mrs. Heard, who was in the courtroom when the verdict was read, said in a later statement that she was disappointed “beyond words” by her finding.
“It hurts me that the mountain of evidence was still not enough to deal with my ex-husband’s disproportionate power, influence and dominance,” she said.
Mrs. Heard did not appear to be encouraged by the jury’s award of $ 2 million in damages, agreeing that she had been defamed in a lawsuit by a lawyer for Mr. Depp. A spokeswoman for Ms. Heard, Alafair Hall, said he planned to appeal.
These cases are often resolved out of court, in part to avoid public scrutiny. The bitter accusations and embarrassing details of this case were broadcast not only in the public hall, but also in front of the cameras that broadcast all the accusations on television and live broadcasts, where they became memes and debated in the social networks.
The 2018 opinion written by Mrs Heard never mentioned Mr Depp’s name, but he argued that it clearly referred to his marriage, which began in 2015 and broke up just over a year later, and which was false. (The first drafts were prepared by the American Civil Liberties Union, where Ms. Heard was an ambassador focused on women’s rights and gender-based violence.)
The jury agreed and found that it contained several statements that were false and made with real malice.
Ms. Heard responded, alleging that she had been defamed in 2020 when one of Mr. Heard’s lawyers. Depp at the time had dismissed his allegations as a “deception” in statements to a British tabloid. The jury found that Mr. Depp had defamed Mrs. Heard in one case, when the lawyer accused her of damaging the couple’s attic and blaming Mr. Depp.
The verdict shocked several legal observers, who noted that a UK judge had ruled two years ago that there was evidence that Mr. Depp had repeatedly assaulted Ms. Heard. That sentence came in a defamation suit that Mr. Depp had later reported that The Sun, a British sensationalist newspaper, had labeled him a “women’s hitter” in a headline. The judge in that case had ruled that the defendants had shown that what they published was “substantially true.”
Mrs. Heard, 36, maintained throughout the trial that everything written in the comment was true.
The combination of star power, sensational details and cameras in the courtroom turned the trial into an internet obsession. The memes and posts that attacked Ms. Heard, some created by superfans of Mr. Depp, they proliferated online. Mrs. Heard said he had received thousands of death threats since the start of the trial and called the online mockery “agonizing.”
Sometimes, making her cry in the stands, Mrs. Heard testified more than a dozen times that, he said, Mr. Depp was violent with her. In a key incident in Australia in 2015, Ms. Heard, Mr. Depp became “belligerent” after taking the MDMA drug and attacked her, grabbing her by the neck and, at one point, sexually assaulting her with an object that Ms. Heard then decided it was a bottle.
“I’m looking into his eyes and I can’t see him anymore,” Ms. Heard. “I’ve never been so scared in my life.”
Mackenna White, a lawyer who advises people on the risks of posting potentially challenged allegations of sexual misconduct, said she was concerned that Ms. Heard is less likely to show up.
“The absolute destruction of Amber Heard will have an impact,” Ms. White. “If you’re someone who’s worried about what might happen if you talk, it could have the same creepy effect that we’ve been trying to reverse all these years.”
Others saw the reaction online as a harbinger of what the jury would decide.
“You now have millions of Americans involved in court proceedings; you can take that as an indication of how the case is going,” said Imran Ansari, a lawyer representing Alan Dershowitz in defamation lawsuits involving Virginia Giuffre. who said he was a victim of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking operation and accused Mr. Dershowitz to be a part of it, which he denies.
Mr. Depp, 58, gave a very different account of their relationship, and of the trip to Australia, in which Mrs. Heard was the aggressor. Mrs. Heard, she said, had once been a girl who seemed “too good to be true,” but she became a couple who mocked him, called him derogatory names, punched him, and threw him. objects.
In Australia, he said, he threw a vodka handle that exploded in his hand and cut off his finger. (She denies throwing the bottle at him and said she only hit him in self-defense or in defense of her sister.)
Johnny Depp’s defamation case against Amber Heard
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In the courtroom. A defamation lawsuit between former married actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard has just been 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.
In his testimony, Mr. Depp, a major star known for his films with director Tim Burton as “Edward Scissorhands,” as well as his portrayal of Captain Jack Sparrow in the Disney “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise, decline in her acting career to the accusations of Ms. Heard.
“It’s very strange when one day you’re Cinderella, so to speak, and then in 0.6 seconds you’re Quasimodo,” said Mr. Depp. “And I didn’t deserve that.”
Several witnesses summoned by Mr. Depp challenged Ms. Violence’s accounts of violence. Heard, including police officers and employees of the actor, who recalled that Ms. Heard appeared unharmed at times when she reported having bruises.
Others reinforced Mr. Depp’s reputation damage, including his agent, who claimed the actor had lost a $ 22.5 million deal to reprise his role in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise after the comment was released. Mrs. Heard. (A Disney production executive who testified said he had no reason to believe that Mr. Depp’s decision not to broadcast was related to the publisher.)
Several of Ms. Heard’s witnesses, including her sister and former makeup artist, testified that she had seen Ms. Heard’s injuries. Heard during the time of the reported abuse. Sister Whitney Henriquez said she saw Mr. Depp actively hitting Mrs. Heard while carrying a plaster of her wound on her finger.
The proceedings in Virginia often became a stage where the couple, and many of their associates, told some of the most intimate, embarrassing, and often contradictory accounts of their relationship.
The texts of Mr. Depp referred to Ms Heard as using insults and obscenities as a “worthless prostitute”. An audio recording captured Mrs. Heard telling Mr. Depp “washed” and a “joke” and other recorded arguments in which they both seem to agree that they were violent with each other.
Mr.’s drug use. Depp and his past opioid addiction were frequently talked about, but his lawyers argued that he never claimed to be a saint, only that he was not an abuser.
“I can’t say I’m ashamed,” Mr. Depp on the personal revelations required at trial, “because I know I’m doing the right thing.”