As the repercussions from her defamation case against ex-husband Johnny Depp continues, Amber Heard has asked for a new trial or a reversal of the prior ruling.
Heard, the 36-year-old star of Aquaman, was found guilty of defaming the 59-year-old Pirates of the Caribbean actor in June.
The Charlie and the Chocolate Factory star claimed that Heard had defamed him in an opinion piece about domestic violence she wrote for The Washington Post in 2018.
As the repercussions from her defamation case against ex-husband Johnny Depp continues, Amber Heard has asked for a new trial or a reversal of the prior ruling.
Heard, the 36-year-old star of Aquaman, was found guilty of defaming the 59-year-old Pirates of the Caribbean actor in June.
Despite Heard not referring to Depp directly in the piece, the Oscar-nominated Edward Scissorhands actor claimed it had caused ‘significant damage’ to his career and reputation.
The jury ordered Heard to pay Depp £8.3 million in compensatory damages after six weeks of testimony and evidence.
Heard had initially been sued by Depp for $50 million in damages; she had countersued for $100 million.
Heard has already filed an appeal with the courts, claiming that the trial was unjust because some treatment notes in which the actress described being abused by Depp were excluded.
In the 68-page document, dated late November, Heard’s attorneys say the court ‘improperly prevented the jury from considering several instances in which Heard reported Depp’s abuse to a medical professional’.
t continued: “If not reversed, the trial court’s exclusion of contemporaneous reports of domestic abuse to medical professionals will make it more difficult for other abuse victims to prove allegations of abuse, and likely deter them from coming forward.
“That holding, if allowed to stand, undoubtedly will have a chilling effect on other women who wish to speak about abuse involving powerful men.”
Additionally, Heard’s legal team argued that the verdict should be appealed and dismissed because Heard was telling the truth in her article and therefore did not defame Depp.
They said: “This case also should never have gone to trial because another court had already concluded that Depp abused Heard on multiple occasions.
“After Depp filed this case, the United Kingdom High Court of Justice ruled in a separate defamation action brought by Depp that Heard’s abuse allegations were true.”
Heard’s legal team, which consists of new attorneys from those who first represented her, also claimed that the couple’s former home of California should have been the venue for the trial rather than Virginia.
The Washington Post servers, which are located in Virginia, were a “completely inconvenient forum with no link to Depp or any significant connection to his claims,” according to the petition.
The one count of defamation against Heard that resulted to Depp’s conviction was allegedly “erroneous,” according to the actor’s legal team, which filed an appeal in the case.
Heard was given $2 million even though she lost the case overall because the jury determined that Depp’s attorney, Adam Waldman, had defamed her by calling her claims of domestic abuse “an ambush, a fake.”
Depp’s attorneys wrote: “The jury’s emphatic favourable verdict on all three defamatory statements alleged in his complaint fully vindicated Mr Depp and restored his reputation.”
A group of judges will rule on both appeal requests, and depending on which legal team is left disappointed by that ruling, Depp or Heard can take the matter to the state’s Supreme Court.
