It seems that Amber Heard is trying to find a way to avoid appealing her defamation trial against her ex-husband Johnny Depp.
The “Aquaman” actress is asking a judge to toss the jury’s verdict and grant her another trial due to a lack of evidence and an alleged fake juror.
Over a month ago, a seven-person jury in Fairfax, Virginia, ruled that Heard had committed defamation in her 2018 Washington Post op-ed, where she declared herself a survivor of domestic violence. The jury awarded the “Pirates of the Caribbean” actor $15 million dollars in damages – $10 million dollars in compensatory damages and $5 million dollars in punitive damages. The $5 million dollars was later reduced to $350,000 dollars – the maximum allowed under Virginia state law.
Heard was also awarded $2 million dollars out of her $100 million dollar countersuit after the jury found that one of Depp’s attorneys had committed defamation when he called her abuse claims “a hoax.”
According to TMZ, the “Zombieland” actress wants a judge to dismiss the jury’s verdict and start over. Earlier this week, Heard’s legal team filed new legal documents in Virginia, asking a judge to either set aside the jury’s ruling for Depp, dismiss the complaint, or order a completely new trial.
Heard’s legal team is arguing three main points, the first of which was that Depp’s legal team didn’t have enough evidence to prove that the statements in her op-ed damaged his career, even though a jury decided that they had.
The second argument is along similar lines as the first: they argue that Johnny Depp’s career was already in jeopardy due to showing up late on set, among other allegations, and that Heard shouldn’t be held responsible for that. Her legal team also claims that Depp’s lawyers failed to prove that she acted “with malice” when she wrote her op-ed, adding that Depp’s legal team failed to prevent evidence that Heard didn’t believe what she wrote in her op-ed.
In other words, a jury can’t find defamation in a true statement, and Heard’s legal team argues that Heard believes everything she wrote was true and that she truly was a victim of abuse. They are also mentioning yet again that Heard never mentioned Depp by name in the op-ed, so they don’t understand how a jury could rule that she had defamed him.
In one of the strangest twists in the highly-publicized defamation trial between Amber Heard and Johnny Depp, Heard’s legal team is arguing that one of the members of the jury summoned to court is not actually the person who showed up. They allege that the court didn’t do its due diligence in vetting its members.
On paper, Juror #15’s records show that they were born in 1945. Apparently, Heard’s legal team has been doing their own research on each member of the jury, and they concluded that this person is much younger than that, and might have been born in 1970. As such, they want the courts to investigate this further. If it turns out that the person summoned to court was not actually the person summoned to the jury, it does present a strong argument to dismiss the jury’s verdict and start the trial all over again.
It should be noted that this latest legal document is not an appeal. As The Blast previously reported, Amber Heard has to post the $8.3 million dollars that she owes Depp in order for an appeal to be considered. It remains to be seen if “The Rum Diary” actress actually has enough money to post an appeal.
As TMZ noted, a judge has yet to rule on her latest filing or comment on the possibility of an imposter juror. One of Depp’s attorneys, Ben Chew, said that he actually expected this move from Heard’s legal team, but noted nothing “substantive” in her motion.
It should be noted that one male juror has already come forward to talk about how they reached a decision in the defamation case under anonymity. They also countered the argument posed by Heard’s attorney, Elaine Bredehoft, saying they were influenced by the #JusticeForJohnnyDepp hashtag on Twitter. The anonymous male juror said that he, and many other members of the jury, do not actually have a Twitter account and stayed away from trial coverage while online.
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