As a well-known person, Johnny Depp had to do a lot to win his libel case against Amber Heard. Seven jurors all agreed that he was not guilty.
Depp said that his ex-wife slandered him in a 2018 newspaper op-ed in which she mentioned that Depp had been accused of abuse. No one ever said his name.
Wednesday, a civil jury in Virginia ruled in favour of Depp on all three of his counts. They said that Heard had not only made false and defamatory statements, but that she had also done so with “actual malice,” which is a higher standard for cases involving public figures. The jury thought that Depp should get more than $10 million.
Depp did win, but it wasn’t a sure thing. A part of Heard’s counterclaim was also found to be valid by the jury. They didn’t agree with two of Heard’s three claims, but they did find that Depp’s lawyer slandered her when he said she messed up their apartment to make it look worse for police. She got $2 million from the jury.
A look at each count the jury thought about:
THE FIRST COUNT AGAINST
Jurors thought about whether or not the online headline of the op-ed in The Washington Post, which said: “I spoke out against sexual violence and had to deal with the anger of our culture. This has to be different.”
Heard’s lawyers said the headline wasn’t written by her.
But the jury decided that it was false and that Heard “made or published” it.
HEARD SECOND COUNT AGAINST
Jurors looked at the third paragraph of the op-ed, which said, “Then, two years ago, I became a public figure for domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture’s anger at women who speak out.”
Depp’s lawyers said it was clear that it was about Depp, since Heard had accused him of domestic violence in public in 2016.
Heard’s lawyers said that there was a mountain of proof that Heard was abused many times, and that if just one time of abuse was proven, the line would not be defamatory. They also said that the statement was true because it wasn’t about Depp but about Heard’s experience speaking out.
The jury didn’t agree, and found that the statement was hurtful.
THE THIRD COUNT AGAINST HEARD
In a second part of the opinion piece, Heard wrote, “I had the rare opportunity to see how institutions protect men accused of abuse in real time.”
Again, Depp’s lawyers said it was clear that it was about Depp.
And, just like with the other two counts, the jury found that Heard had hurt Depp’s reputation with “actual malice.” This means that there was clear and convincing evidence that Heard either knew it was false or did not care about the truth.
FIRST THING GOING AGAINST DEPP
Heard sued Depp on three counts of defamation, saying that his former lawyer Adam Waldman had repeatedly lied about her. Waldman had said that Heard’s abuse claims were made up. Heard said that the remarks were bad for her career.
A statement from Waldman that was posted on the website of The Daily Mail on April 8, 2020: “Amber Heard and her media friends use false accusations of sexual violence both as a sword and a shield, depending on what they need. They have chosen some of the “facts” from her sexual violence hoax and used them to hurt the public and Mr. Depp.”
The jury decided that Heard’s lawyers had not shown that he had been slandered in every way.