Johnny Depp prevails in Amber Heard libel suit; jury awards $15 million

Virginia: Johnny Depp won a defamation suit Wednesday against his former wife Amber Heard after a jury found that she had defamed Depp in saying that he had abused her over the course of their relationship. 

According to details, the jury awarded Depp $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages in the trial. 

However, the punitive damages were immediately reduced by Judge Penney Azcarate to Virginia’s statutory cap of $350,000. 

Depp, who was not in court Wednesday due to a previously scheduled work commitment, sued for $50 million in damages over a 2018 opinion-editorial essay by Heard in The Washington Post, in which Amber said she had become a “public figure representing domestic abuse”.  

Although the essay never mentioned Depp by name, his attorneys said it indirectly referred to allegations she made against Depp during their 2016 divorce.  

Amber Heard was awarded $2m in her counter-suit against Depp for compensatory damages to her after finding one of her points valid: that former Depp attorney Adam Waldman had defamed her when he told a tabloid that Amber and her friends created a hoax that included roughing up her apartment to look worse for police. 

Heard issued a statement after the ruling: “The disappointment I feel today is beyond words. I’m heartbroken that the mountain of evidence still was not enough to stand up to the disproportionate power, influence, and sway of my ex-husband. I’m even more disappointed with what this verdict means for other women. It is a setback. It sets back the clock to a time when a woman who spoke up and spoke out could be publicly shamed and humiliated.”

She added, “It sets back the idea that violence against women is to be taken seriously. I believe Johnny’s attorneys succeeded in getting the jury to overlook the key issue of Freedom of Speech and ignore evidence that was so conclusive that we won in the UK. I’m sad I lost this case. But I am sadder still that I seem to have lost a right I thought I had as an American — to speak freely and openly.”

In his own statement, Depp, who is currently in the U.K, said: “False, very serious and criminal allegations were levied at me via the media, which triggered an endless barrage of hateful content, although no charges were ever brought against me. It had already traveled around the world twice within a nanosecond and it had a seismic impact on my life and my career”.

“And six years later, the jury gave me my life back. I am truly humbled… Truth never perishes,” he wrote on Instagram.  

The case

The trial, which was overseen by Judge Penney Azcarate, began in April, with Depp testifying that he never hit Amber and that she, instead, was the perpetrator of abuse in the relationship. 

Since then, the two had been battling it out in court — each claiming that they were abused by the other — for more than seven weeks. 

Depp and Heard started dating in 2012, got engaged in 2014, and were married the following year. They separated in 2016 and finalized their divorce in 2017, citing irreconcilable differences. 

The following year, Heard wrote her Washington Post op-ed claiming to be a survivor of domestic abuse. Depp sued her for defamation in 2019 over the article.