As expected, Amber Heard’s legal team has filed a memorandum to throw out the verdict of Johnny Depp’s defamation case against her. The 44-page filing submitted on July 1 argues that there was insufficient evidence to merit the damages of over $10 million awarded, in part zeroing in on Depp’s claim that he lost a film role in Pirates of the Caribbean 6 due to an op-ed that Heard published in The Washington Post in 2018. Depp “proceeded solely on a defamation by implication theory, abandoning any claims that Ms. Heard’s statements were actually false,” reads the brief from Heard’s legal team, led by her attorney Elaine Bredehoft.
In June, after a six-week trial in a Virginia court, a jury found Heard liable for three defamation claims stemming from one op-ed. In the article, Heard advocated for legislation against sexual violence and did not name Depp explicitly. The jury awarded Depp $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages (later reduced by Virginia law to $350,000). In a simultaneous countersuit, they found Depp defamed Heard on one count, thanks to a statement given by one of his attorneys. They awarded her $2 million in compensatory damages.
In the filing, Bredehoft argues that Depp’s attorneys misrepresented the scope of the case to the jury. “From the beginning,” the brief reads, “Mr. Depp set out to try this case as a domestic relations dispute he wished he had tried, rather than settled, in 2016.”
According to the filing, instead of...
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