Jun 03, 2022
Johnny Depp and Amber Heard Defamation Trial
On Wednesday, June 1, the Pirates of the Caribbean actor, Johnny Depp won his defamation trial against his former wife Amber Heard. The explosive celebrity defamation trial has become a media sensation. Depp was awarded $15 million in damages, including $5 million in punitive damages, which the judge capped to $350,000, the legal limit in Virginia. In total, he is entitled to $10.35 million. The jury awarded Heard $2 million, with the finding that a former Depp attorney, Adam Waldman, had defamed her.
Let us read how this multi-million dollar defamation case unfolded.
The London Trial
In 2020, Johnny Depp lost his U.K court case after a judge, in the absence of a jury, concluded that Depp assaulted his ex-wife Amber Heard on a dozen occasions. The libel case at London court began in 2018, centred around an article in one of U.K’s biggest tabloids, “The Sun”, which claimed Johnny Depp was a “wife beater”. Depp sued both the Publisher and The Sun’s executive director Dan Wotton for libel. After a three-week trial, Justice Andrew Nicol ruled against Depp in 2020, saying that the British newspaper had presented substantial evidence to show that Depp had been violent against Heard.
Depp and his legal team tried to get the ruling overturned with an appeal but Judge Nicol refused to grant Depp the permission to appeal against his judgement stating that proposed grounds do not have a reasonable prospect of success. The judge also ordered Depp to make an initial payment of $841,733 to The Sun, to cover its legal fees.
The Virginia Trial
The trial in Virginia has covered the same ground. Depp and Heard’s defamation lawsuit began on 11 April 2022. Depp’s suit against Heard alleges that she defamed him, in December 2018, by writing an op-ed in The Washington Post claiming to be a survivor of domestic sexual violence. The trial took place in Fairfax County courthouse which is located in Virginia, US. Depp sued her in that area as the online edition of The Washington Post is published via servers in the County. However, Heard’s attorneys tried to move the trial to California but the major reason for Depp’s attorney to sue in Virginia was because of the State’s anti-SLAPP legislation, which is not as wide-ranging as in California.
SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation. Anti-SLAPP laws are intended to prevent people from using courts and the potential threat of a lawsuit, to intimidate people who are exercising their first amendment rights. Also, the presence of a jury which was absent in the U.K. is a strong reason for Depp suing his ex-wife in the US.
While Johnny Depp wasn’t directly named in the newspaper article, the jury found that it contains clear implication by Amber Heard that he is a domestic abuser. He sued Heard seeking damages not less than $50 million for the false allegation, on the other hand Heard filed a counterclaim against Depp of $100 million for nuisance and immunity from his allegations.
Contentions of the Parties
Heard’s lawyer, J. Benjamin Rottenborn claimed that this lawsuit is centred around the question of whether Heard was exercising her First Amendment right to free speech by writing a statement for The Washington Post about her experience with domestic violence. On the other hand, Depp’s lawyer Benjamin Chew accused Heard of ruining Depp’s career, resulting in him being alienated from producers who once favoured the movie star.
On 20 April 2022, Depp on his first stand testified that the real abuser in their relationship was his ex-wife Amber Heard, stating that her verbal attacks would turn into violence. Attorneys for Depp laid out evidence of Heard’s alleged abuse while Heard’s lawyers focused on Depp’s past drug and alcohol use.
Depp stated that while he was filming his movie franchise “Pirates of the Caribbean” in Australia in 2015, he would lock himself up in the bathroom to avoid having a physical altercation over instigated verbal attacks by Heard. During that argument Depp said a large bottle of vodka was thrown at him by Heard, which made contact with his hand, slicing off his middle finger. Depp also testified that in a fight in 2016, Heard was responsible for faecal matter found on their shared bed after Depp threatened to end their marriage.
When Depp and Heard reached a divorce settlement in 2016, Heard announced that she would donate her entire $7 million settlement money to two charity organisations, i.e, American Civil Liberties Union and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. However, the organisation testified that only one instalment was transferred by Amber Heard directly. It was also alleged that an amount was also transferred from the bank account of Elon Musk in the name of Heard.
Amber Heard took her first stand on 4 May 2022, when she stated that to her surprise, Depp slapped her three times during a conversation about his tattoo. This was the first time she got hit by him to which the actress was in shock and did not know how to respond.
Heard testified that in March 2013, after consuming a large amount of cocaine and hard liquor, Depp grabbed one of her pet dogs and held it out of a moving car window which created discomfort and showed cruelty towards the animal. She also alleged that in the same year, Depp did a cavity search on her while looking for his cocaine. According to her, Depp was harming himself by cutting his arms during fights by the end of 2016. Heard on her stand painted a picture of a man who oscillated between active addiction and sobriety, which made it hard for her to continue the relationship.
Depp’s team leaned on the difference between Depp’s and Heard’s history. While previously, Depp had been accused of property damage and verbal threats, he had never been accused of the kind of violence that is claimed by Heard. However, Heard has some minor accusations of violence to account for, focusing on a 2009 incident where Heard had a verbal fight with Depp’s then-girlfriend, that turned into violence from the side of Heard.
Laurel Anderson, a marriage counsellor who counselled Depp and Heard during their marriage, also testified at the Fairfax trial. She considered their marriage as a dynamic one because of ‘mutual abuse’. Anderson testified that she saw Heard bruised after altercations with Depp, and that Heard told her she had initiated physical fights with Depp on multiple occasions. She said she believed, but was not certain, that Depp had also initiated physical fights with Heard. Both Depp and Heard have said that they experienced physical abuse as children, and Anderson’s theory is that their relationship pushed them back into toxic childhood patterns, with each abusing the other and neither one ultimately more responsible than the other.
On 24 May 2022 Heard’s team rested its case, while Depp’s team requested the Circuit Court Judge Penny Azcarate to dismiss Heard’s countersuit, which was held rejected. On 25 and 26 May both Depp and Heard returned to the stand respectively, before closing arguments, expressing their disappointment and grief against one another’s acquisitions. On 27 May the jury heard closing arguments and started deliberating.
The Verdict
The jury comprised of seven members and two alternates reached a verdict on 1 June 2022. Unanimously the jury favoured Depp and found that Heard had defamed him. The jury awarded $5 million to Depp in punitive damages and $10 million in compensatory damages. Jurors also concluded that part of Heard’s counterclaim had merits. They rejected two of Heard’s three counts but found she was defamed by Depp's lawyer who had used foul language against her, and hence the jury awarded her $2 million.
The jurors’ first count was against Heard considering that she made or published the article in The Washington Post against Depp, knowing that it would be defamatory for him.
The jurors’ second count against Heard was based on the defamatory statement in The Post: “Then two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out”, which clearly indicated Depp being an abuser without any evidence.
As with the other two counts, in the third count against Heard, the jurors found Heard had defamed Depp with “actual malice” as there was clear and convincing evidence that Heard either knew the article she made in The Washington Post in 2018 was false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth.
Heard levied three counts of defamation against Depp, saying she’d been repeatedly defamed by his former attorney Adam Waldman, who called Heard’s abuse allegations a hoax. Jurors considered a statement from Waldman that appeared on The Daily Mail’s website on 8 April 2020, in which Adam Waldman stated that Amber Heard and her friends in the media use fake sexual-violence allegations against Depp to ruin his public image. However, in the first count against Depp, the jurors concluded that Heard’s attorney has not proven all the elements of defamation.
Heard scored her only victory over a statement Waldman gave to The Daily Mail in the same 2020 article. He accused Heard and her friends of fabricating abuse allegations. Hence for the second count against Depp, the jurors agreed with Heard’s attorneys that Waldman’s statement was false and defamatory and that he’d acted with actual malice.
The final count against Waldman involved a statement from the same article: “We have reached the beginning of the end of Ms. Heard’s abuse hoax against Johnny Depp.” Jurors concluded Heard’s lawyers had not proven the statement to be defamatory.
