Amber Heard Just Made A Move To Reverse The Johnny Depp Verdict
Amber Heard finally did it and made a move to try to reverse the verdict in the Johnny Depp defamation case.
Will Amber Heard be able to reverse any aspect of the verdict that was reached in her trial with Johnny Depp? At this point, it doesn’t seem likely. All of her post-trial motions have been dismissed at this point. However, Heard’s team has officially filed documents with the Fairfax County court to appeal the verdict. As reported by Metro UK, Heard’s spokesperson said they’re filing the appeal on the basis that the court made errors “preventing a just and fair verdict.”
Based on the dismissal of earlier post-trial motions from Amber Heard, it seems unlikely that this appeal will get much traction. In the Heard and Depp trial, Depp walked away with a decisive legal victory, with the court awarding him $15 million in damages. $10 million was awarded in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages. Some damages were capped at $350,000, per Virginia state law. This reduced the total damages to $8.35 million. Heard was awarded $2 million in compensatory damages, winning one of three of her countersuits. Depp originally filed his defamation lawsuit for $50 million and Heard filed her countersuit for $100 million.
The crux of Amber Heard’s appeal seems to lie with an alleged error with a juror that was present for the trial. While Heard’s team had previously called the credibility of the jury into question, they further claimed that the wrong juror was seated at the trial. It was reported by Deadline that a 77-year-old individual was called up for jury duty but appears to live at the same address as a 52-year-old with ‘the same surname.’ Judge Penny Azcarate said the juror issues were irrelevant and that prejudice from said juror couldn’t be proved, saying “The juror was vetted, sat for the entire jury, deliberated, and reached a verdict.”
The battle between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard began in 2018 when Amber Heard wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post about her experiences with domestic abuse, without naming her abuse. Depp was assumed to be the abuser by the public and he subsequently lost roles in franchises like Pirates of the Caribbean and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Depp then sued his ex-wife for defamation. With the trial now over and further action seeming unlikely, both will be moving on with their respective careers. Amber Heard will be appearing in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom in March of 2023 and Johnny Depp will be appearing in the French language film La Favorite. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is the sequel to 2018’s Aquaman and La Favorite will tell the story of a woman working her way up through the courts of Louis XV to become his mistress.
For more info on the Amber Heard and Johnny Depp case, you can check out the report from Bot Sentinel that observed targeted social media attacks on Heard throughout the trial and in the wake of the trial. The report finds that 627 accounts were focused primarily on negative posts about Amber Heard and her supporters. Whether or not you agree with the results of the trial, it’s interesting to see how social media can be used to affect these kinds of events. Check out the report for yourself here.
