Depp v. Heard
John C. Depp, II v. Amber Laura Heard was a trial held in Fairfax County, Virginia, from April 11 to June 1, 2022, that ruled on allegations of defamation between formerly married American actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. Depp, as plaintiff, filed a complaint of defamation against defendant Heard claiming $50 million in damages; Heard filed counterclaims against Depp claiming $100 million in damages.
Depp and Heard first met in 2009 and got married in February 2015. Heard filed for divorce in May 2016, claiming that Depp had abused her physically, which he denied. The couple's divorce was finalized in January 2017. In the High Court of Justice in London, Depp sued News Group Newspapers Ltd for libel over an article published in The Sun that claimed he had assaulted Heard. In November 2020, the presiding judge ruled against Depp, stating, "he great majority of alleged assaults of Ms. Heard by Mr. Depp have been proved to the civil standard." Several legal experts suggested that Depp had a smaller chance of winning in the American trial compared to the British trial. His victory in Virginia was attributed by some to the fact that he got a jury trial, which may be why he and his legal team sought to have the trial in Virginia to begin with.
In the Virginia trial, Depp's claims related to a December 2018 op-ed by Heard, published in The Washington Post. Depp claimed Heard caused new damage to his reputation and career by stating that she had spoken up against "sexual violence" and "faced our culture's wrath"; that "two years ago, became a public figure representing domestic abuse" and "felt the full force of our culture's wrath for women who speak out"; and that she "had the rare vantage point of seeing, in real time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse". Heard's counterclaims included allegations that Adam Waldman, Depp's former lawyer, had defamed her in statements published in the Daily Mail in 2020. Throughout the trial, Depp's legal team sought to disprove Heard's domestic abuse allegations and to demonstrate that she had been the instigator, rather than the victim, of intimate partner violence. Heard's lawyers defended the op-ed, claiming it to be factual and protected by the First Amendment.
The jury ruled that Heard's [|op-ed references] to "sexual violence" and "domestic abuse" were false and defamed Depp with actual malice. It awarded Depp $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages from Heard, although the court reduced the punitive damages to $350,000 due to a limit imposed by Virginia state law. It also ruled that Depp had defamed Heard through Waldman, who had falsely alleged that Heard and her friends "roughed up" Depp's penthouse as part of an "ambush, a hoax". It awarded Heard $2 million in compensatory damages and $0 in punitive damages from Depp. Separately, the jury ruled that Waldman's other allegations of Heard's "sexual violence hoax" and "abuse hoax" against Depp had not been proven defamatory.
After the trial ended, Heard put forth motions to set aside the verdict, but was unsuccessful. Then, both Depp and Heard appealed against the respective verdicts. In December 2022, both parties reached a settlement and dropped their appeals, with Depp's lawyers Benjamin Chew and Camille Vasquez stating that Depp would receive $1 million from Heard.
The livestreamed trial attracted large numbers of viewers and [|considerable social media response], most of which was sympathetic to Depp and critical of Heard. The trial renewed debates around topics relating to domestic violence, domestic violence against men, the #MeToo movement, and women's rights, although some commentators were skeptical of the trial's long-term implications.
Background
Depp and Heard's relationship
The two actors met in 2009 while filming The Rum Diary; according to Heard, their relationship began "around the end of 2011 or early 2012". They were engaged in January 2014, and, in February 2015, they married on Depp's private island in The Bahamas, Little Hall's Pond Cay. Heard filed for divorce on May 23, 2016, and obtained a temporary restraining order against Depp. She also requested $50,000 a month in spousal support, which was denied. In response, Depp alleged that she was "attempting to secure a premature financial resolution by alleging abuse". Heard testified about the alleged abuse in a deposition during their divorce litigation, alleging that Depp had been "verbally and physically abusive" throughout their relationship, usually while under the influence of alcohol or drugs. In light of the publicity, images of Heard's alleged injuries were published by the media.A settlement was reached in August 2016, and the divorce was finalized in January 2017. Heard withdrew the restraining order, and she and Depp released a joint statement stating that their relationship was "intensely passionate and periodically volatile, but always bound by love. Neither party has made false accusations for financial gain. There was never any intent of physical or emotional harm."
Depp paid Heard a divorce settlement of $7 million, which she pledged to donate to the American Civil Liberties Union and the Children's Hospital Los Angeles. The settlement included a non-disclosure agreement preventing either party from discussing their relationship publicly. As of April 2022, Heard had paid less than half of what she promised to the ACLU from her divorce settlement over five years prior. Much of what she had paid to that point was thought by the ACLU to have actually come from Elon Musk and Depp himself instead of Heard.
''Depp v News Group Newspapers Ltd''
In April 2018, British tabloid The Sun published an article with an online title that described Depp as a "wife beater", and, in June 2018, Depp sued News Group Newspapers, the publisher of The Sun, and then executive editor Dan Wootton for libel. Both Depp and Heard testified in the July 2020 trial, which focused on evaluating 14 alleged incidents of abuse. In November 2020, Judge Andrew Nicol ruled in favor of the publisher, finding that the great majority of Depp's alleged assaults had been proven to a civil standard and, therefore, the paper's characterization of Depp was "substantially true". The verdict found that Depp had assaulted Heard in 12 of the 14 alleged incidents and put her in fear of her life. Judge Nicol rejected Depp's contention that Heard was a "gold-digger", saying in his ruling: "Her donation of the seven million US dollars to charity is hardly the act one would expect of a gold-digger." Heard later claimed in the 2022 Virginia trial that she was scheduled to pay the entire pledged donation within 10 years and that she was behind her payment schedule because of Depp's suits against her.After the verdict, Depp resigned from the Fantastic Beasts film series at the request of Warner Bros., the film's production company. In March 2021, the Court of Appeal rejected Depp's request to appeal the verdict, concluding that the appeal had "no real prospect of success". Lawyers for Depp had argued that he had not received a fair hearing, that Heard was an unreliable witness and that recently discovered evidence contradicts Heard's assertion about her donation of the divorce settlement sum, arguing that the Judge in deciding the case, gave great weight to Heard's testimony that she donated all her $7 million divorce settlement to charity. But the appeals judges concluded he had a "full and fair" trial, and that "the judge based his conclusions on each of the incidents on his extremely detailed review of the evidence specific to each incident in an approach of that kind there was little need or room for the judge to give weight to any general assessment of Ms. Heard's credibility."
Heard's op-ed in ''The Washington Post''
In December 2018, The Washington Post published an op-ed written by Heard and titled "Amber Heard: I spoke up against sexual violence—and faced our culture's wrath. That has to change." In the article, Heard stated: "Then two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture's wrath for women who speak out. I had the rare vantage point of seeing, in real time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse." She further stated that, as a result of this, she had lost a film role and an advertising campaign for a global fashion brand. The op-ed called for Congress to re-authorize the Violence Against Women Act and did not explicitly mention Depp by name.Waldman's comments in the ''Daily Mail''
Matters from Heard's counterclaims pursued through the trial related to three statements made by Depp's lawyer, Adam Waldman, and published by the Daily Mail in April and June 2020.First, Waldman stated that "Amber Heard and her friends in the media used fake sexual violence allegations as both sword and shield, depending on their needs. They have selected some of her sexual violence hoax 'facts' as the sword, inflicting them on the public and Mr. Depp."
Waldman's second statement regarded a 2016 incident in Depp and Heard's Hollywood penthouse: "Quite simply this was an ambush, a hoax. They set Mr. Depp up by calling the cops but the first attempt didn't do the trick. The officers came to the penthouses, thoroughly searched and interviewed, and left after seeing no damage to face or property. So, Amber and her friends spilled a little wine and roughed the place up, got their stories straight under the direction of a lawyer and publicist, and then placed a second call to 911."
Third, Waldman stated: "We have reached the beginning of the end of Ms. Heard's abuse hoax against Johnny Depp."