Depp Victorious: Johnny Depp Wins Defamation Suit Against Amber Heard

A Virginia jury decided unanimously in favor of Johnny Depp in his defamation lawsuit against his ex-wife, actress Amber Heard.

A Virginia jury decided unanimously in favor of Johnny Depp in his defamation lawsuit against his ex-wife, actress Amber Heard.

Depp was awarded $10 million compensatory damages and $5 million punitive damages, vindicating his claims that Heard had lied about Depp abusing her during and after their marriage.
The jury also found Heard was defamed by one of Depp’s lawyers and awarded her $2 million compensatory damages.
Depp sued Heard over a 2018 op-ed she published in the Washington Post (ghost-written by the American Civil Liberties Union) that heavily implied Depp abused her.
Heard plans to appeal the judgment.
At various points, the trial featured “graphic allegations of abuse, recordings of vicious fights and airing of nasty text messages.”
The salacious details revealed in the trial leave both actors’ future career prospects uncertain at this time.

The New York Times summarized the trial’s major events, including the major claims made by both sides in the trial.
The Washington Post examined why Depp lost his defamation trial in the U.K. but won in the U.S. The U.S. is typically considered a much more difficult place to win a defamation suit.
The Root had the heater take to end all heater takes: the verdict in a trial between two uber-wealthy white celebrities “sends a message to black women everywhere.” When the only tool you have is a hammer…

National Review offered a useful recap of the trial’s twists and turns that led to the unanimous jury verdict in Depp’s favor.
The Federalist said the real loser from the Depp-Heard trial was “the pathetic journalists” of The Washington Post, which printed the ACLU-ghostwritten op-ed from Amber Heard that kicked off the entire imbroglio.
Reason called the Depp-Heard trial an example of “how not to handle a #MeToo case” and cautioned against trying to condense a messy and salacious trial between two multimillionaires into a simple story with hero-villain or partisan narratives.

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