According to Johnny Depp’s attorneys, “We expected this counterattack from Amber Heard’s attorneys.” AFP photo
Amber Heard’s legal team filed a motion request that the verdict of the libel trial against ex-husband Johnny Depp be overturnedincluding $ 10.35 million in damages awarded to Depp by the jury.
In addition to Heard’s attorneys arguing that the verdict is unsupported, the 43-page document filed Friday in the Fairfax County Circuit Court also calls for “investigation into inadequate jury service.”
He claims that public information indicates that a juror who served during the trial was born in 1970, although court officials have indicated his birth year as 1945.
The trial between Johnny Depp and his ex-wife, Amber Heard, has been attracting media attention for two months. AP photo
“This discrepancy raises the question of whether Juror 15 actually received a subpoena. to serve as a jury and whether the court has properly investigated to complement it, ”Heard’s lawyers wrote.
Not to pay
Heard’s legal team also claims it the $ 10.35 million fee awarded by the jury to the actress is “inconsistent and irreconcilable” with the jury concluding that both she and Depp had defamed each other.
In addition to Depp’s $ 10 million in damages, plus $ 350,000 in punitive damages, the jury also awarded Heard $ 2 million in damages for his counterclaim.
cancel the verdict
“Depp has presented no evidence that Ms. Heard did not believe she was abused,” Heard’s attorneys wrote. “Therefore, Mr. Depp did not meet the legal requirements of actual malice and the sentence must be annulled “.
Already in the days before the verdict, the most recurring image of Johnny Depp was on air in England, together with Jeff Beck.
Depp’s chief attorney, Ben Chew, commented on the motion to overturn the verdict and dismissed it as “what we expectedonly longer, not more substantial “in a statement to Courthouse News.
The tip of the ball
The trial began when Depp, the plaintiff in the case, sued Heard for libel over the piece of opinion of the Washington Post from 2018 which he published alluding to his previous allegations of abuse.
Although the editorial didn’t directly mention the Pirates of the Caribbean, Depp claimed it damaged his reputation and ruined his career. A year before the opinion piece was published, Heard and Depp divorced after two years of marriage and Heard claimed that Depp subjected her to emotional, physical and sexual abuse throughout your relationship.
The moment when Amber Heard is contained by her lawyer, Elaine Bredehoft, after hearing the sentence in the trial held in Fairfax, United States. photo EFE
In 2020, before the trial in the United States, The London High Court ruled against Depp in a separate libel caseafter the plaintiff sued the newspaper The sun for calling him a “wife beater”. The UK court ruled that he assaulted Heard in 12 of the 14 alleged incidents.
Since the trial ended in June, Heard has appeared in interviews about the situation, describing the seven-week legal battle that took place in public. When in his participation in the popular news program Today they asked him as “the most humiliating and horrible thing I’ve ever been through”.
CJL
Source: Clarin
