What's Next Now That The Dust Has Settled In Heard, Depp Trial?
After a 13-hour deliberation by the jury, Johnny Depp won more than $10 million in his defamation case against Amber Heard.
LEARN MOREPosted: 12:53 p.m. EDT Jul 5, 2022
Amber Heard's lawyers have asked a judge to throw out the $10.35 million verdict against her in the defamation case filed by ex-husband Johnny Depp, arguing that the verdict was not supported by the evidence and that one of the jurors may not have been properly vetted by the court.
In post-trial motions filed Friday, Heard's attorneys call the jury's June 1 award of $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages to Depp "excessive" and "indefensible." They ask the judge to set aside the verdict and dismiss Depp's lawsuit or order a new trial. Immediately after the verdict, the judge reduced the compensatory damages to $350,000 under a state cap.
Depp sued Heard for libel in Fairfax County Circuit Court over a December 2018 op-ed she wrote in The Washington Post describing herself as "a public figure representing domestic abuse." Depp's lawyers alleged he was defamed by the article even though it never mentioned him by name.
Depp said he never hit Heard and that she was the abuser.
Depp had to prove that he never assaulted Heard, that her op-ed piece defamed him and that she wrote the article with actual malice.
In their post-trial motions, Heard's legal team argued that to find that Heard had actual malice, Depp would have had to show that at the time Heard's article was published, she did not believe she had been abused.
Heard's lawyers also ask the judge to investigate "potential improper juror service," alleging that one of the jurors who was chosen to serve on the jury was listed as being born in 1945 in documents given to the attorneys before the jury selection process, but is listed as being born in 1970 in publicly available information.
"This discrepancy raises the question whether Juror 15 actually received a summons for jury duty and was properly vetted by the Court to serve on the jury," Heard's lawyers said in their motion.
Depp's attorneys did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The jury also awarded Heard $2 million in her counterclaim against Depp, finding that Heard was defamed by one of Depp's lawyers, who accused her of creating a detailed hoax that included roughing up the couple's apartment to look worse for police.
In some ways, the trial was a replay of a lawsuit Depp filed in the United Kingdom against a British tabloid after he was described as a "wife beater." The judge in that case ruled in the newspaper's favor in 2020 after finding that Heard was telling the truth in her descriptions of abuse.
Additional reporting by The Associated Press.
