After a raucous six-week trial followed by just two days of deliberation, a verdict arrived for the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard defamation trial. A jury found Heard defamed her ex-husband in a 2018 Washington Post op-ed about surviving abuse, in which she never mentioned him by name. Heard had countersued him, which also succeeded: The same jury found Depp’s lawyer had defamed her over claims that she and her friends had set up an “ambush, a hoax” to entrap his client. And yet Depp owes far less money than Heard does, and his statement was considerably more upbeat about the outcome than she was.
But this may be far from over. Entertainment Weekly reports that Heard plans to appeal the verdict in an ordeal she has claimed cost her work, and a trial she said got her “hundreds” of death threats.
After the verdict was revealed, Depp — who was not present in the Virginia courthouse — released a celebratory statement, saying the jury “gave me my life back.” Heard, by contrast, said she was “heartbroken,” but “even more disappointed with what this verdict means for other women.” She saw the verdict as a “setback” that “sets back the clock to a time when a woman who spoke up and spoke out could be publicly shamed and humiliated. It sets back the idea that violence against women is to be taken seriously.”
The jury awarded Depp $10 million in compensatory damages, plus $5 million in punitive damages, though Judge Penney Azcarate reduced the latter to $350,000 in accordance with the state’s statutory cap. Heard was awarded $2 million in compensatory damages for her counterclaim.
In her statement, Heard lamented that “the mountain of evidence still was not enough to stand up to the disproportionate power, influence, and sway of my ex-husband.” But this story may not be over.
(Via EW)