Johnny Depp

Verdict caps closely watched celebrity trial over Washington Post op-ed alleging domestic abuse.

A Virginia jury has ruled that actor Amber Heard defamed her ex-husband Johnny Depp in an article in which she said she was a victim of abuse.

He said the top of the finger was severed when Heard threw a vodka bottle at him in 2015. Heard denied injuring Depp's finger and said Depp sexually assaulted her that night with a liquor bottle. The article did not mention Depp by name but his lawyer told jurors it was clear that Heard was referring to him. It sets back the clock to a time when a woman who spoke up and spoke out could be publicly shamed and humiliated. "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. They found that Depp defamed Amber Heard but it was through his attorney, Adam Waldman, and only in one of three counts.

The jury also found in favour of Heard, who said she was defamed by Depp's lawyer when he called her abuse allegations a hoax. Jury members found Depp should be ...

(Heard and Depp's teams each blame the other.) He was also replaced as the title character in the third Fantastic Beasts spin-off film, The Crimes of Grindelwald. I also hope that the position will now return to innocent until proven guilty, both within the courts and in the media. In the Virginia case, Depp had to prove not only that he never assaulted Heard, but that Heard's article — which focused primarily on public policy related to domestic violence — defamed him. "From the very beginning, the goal of bringing this case was to reveal the truth, regardless of the outcome. Both performers emerge from the trial with reputations in tatters with unclear prospects for their careers. I hope that my quest to have the truth be told will have helped others, men or women, who have found themselves in my situation, and that those supporting them never give up. He'd take my life from me," Heard said in her final testimony. Spectators who couldn't get in lined up on the street to cheer Depp and jeer Heard whenever either appeared outside. While the case was ostensibly about libel, most of the testimony focused on whether Heard had been physically and sexually abused, as she claimed. The jury ruled that Heard defamed Depp in all three of the actor's claims. It sets back the clock to a time when a woman who spoke up and spoke out could be publicly shamed and humiliated. "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.

Depp sued for $50 million in damages over a 2018 essay in The Washington Post, in which Heard said she had become a “public figure representing domestic ...

"I also hope that the position will now return to innocent until proven guilty, both within the courts and in the media." In that conversation, Depp and Heard argued, and he tossed her cellphone on the couch after he heard her laughing about him to a friend, according to his testimony. He testified that Heard flew out to stay with him in March 2015 after she wrapped filming on a movie in London and that the couple had a fight regarding a postnuptial agreement. Ben King, who worked for Depp as an estate manager and was brought out by Depp to Australia, testified that he never saw a phone smashed following the couple's argument. The forensic psychologist hired by Depp's legal team testified that she diagnosed Heard with both borderline personality disorder and histrionic personality disorder, which was later disputed by Heard's own forensic psychologist. Heard said she believed Depp may have severed his finger while smashing a phone that was mounted on the wall. But about a year or so into the relationship, Depp said Heard became volatile and instigated arguments over small matters. The officers said they did not observe physical injury to Heard, noting her face appeared red with emotion, and that she was uncooperative. Heard initially alleged in 2016 when she filed for a protective order that Depp bruised her after he threw a phone at her. Justice Andrew Nicol ruled against Depp in 2020, saying the British tabloid had presented substantial evidence to show that Depp was violent against Heard on at least 12 of 14 occasions. In a statement on Wednesday, Heard said that "the disappointment I feel today is beyond words. Heard had countersued for $100 million and said she was only ever violent with Depp in self-defense or defense of her younger sister.

The Johnny Depp-Amber Heard defamation trial moved to the jury Friday after six weeks of testimony.

The jury for Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s defamation trial has reached a verdict. (Heard’s attorneys argued for the trial to take place in Los Angeles, where she and Depp lived.) Jouvenal wrote that free speech advocates were worried that the state had become “a magnet for dubious litigation aimed at punishing critics and blunting aggressive media coverage on topics of public concern.” Documents from the Depp-Heard case are now public on the Fairfax County Court website. Not knowing how long deliberations would take, the crowds of Depp fans had largely cleared out last Friday after closing arguments. “Actionable” means both false and defamatory — that is, harmful to someone’s reputation. There was a sudden flurry of activity at the courthouse around 1:30 p.m. when Court TV and the Law & Crime network began reporting a verdict had been reached. When the plaintiff accusing a defendant of defamation is a public figure (like Johnny Depp), their legal team has to prove actual malice — that is, that the defendant either knew the communication was false or acted recklessly with regard to whether it was true — thanks to the 1964 Supreme Court decision New York Times Co. v. Like many women, I had been harassed and sexually assaulted by the time I was of college age. I knew certain things early on, without ever having to be told. It will bring an end to the seven-week trial that brought emotional testimony recounting Depp and Heard’s tumultuous relationship and its fallout. The trial was held in Virginia, where the printing presses and servers of The Washington Post are located.

A jury in Fairfax, Virginia, reached a decision Wednesday in the defamation case brought by Johnny Depp against his ex-wife Amber Heard.

The jury reached a verdict, and it is set to be read in about 90 minutes. "Someone who survived abuse and didn’t allow his name to be tarnished by lies," the user wrote. Just before 2 p.m. ET, the hashtag "#JusticeForJohnnyDepp" began to trend with more than 40,000 tweets. “Your presence shows where your priorities are," according to a statement from Heard's camp. The seven person panel deliberated for approximately 13 hours. Heard has countersued Depp for $100 million.

Hollywood is weighing in on the shocking Johnny Depp defamation trial result.

"From the very beginning, the goal of bringing this case was to reveal the truth, regardless of the outcome. It sets back the clock to a time when a woman who spoke up and spoke out could be publicly shamed and humiliated. "The disappointment I feel today is beyond words. It sets back the idea that violence against women is to be taken seriously," she continued. It had already travelled 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. Speaking the truth was something that I owed to my children and to all those who have remained steadfast in their support of me. "Wow, it wasn't what I was expecting. 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. "Six years ago, my life, the life of my children, the lives of those closest to me, and also, the lives of the people who for many, many years have supported and believed in me were forever changed. "All in the blink of an eye. Despite Depp not being named in the op-ed, the jury of seven men and women decided the inference was clear that she was referring to him as being an abuser – claims she could not substantiate.

Mr. Depp sued Ms. Heard for defamation after she described herself in an op-ed as a “public figure representing domestic abuse.” She countersued.

Mr. Dougherty said that the publication of the op-ed was timed to coincide with the release of the movie “Aquaman,” in which Ms. Heard had a starring role. Mr. Depp’s lawyers asserted that the article made clear allusions to Ms. Heard’s prior accusations — which Mr. Depp denied — and that they were central to the piece’s relevance. And a Disney production executive, Tina Newman, testified that she was unaware of any decisions about Mr. Depp’s potential role in a sixth “Pirates” movie that were connected directly to Ms. Heard’s op-ed. Another A.C.L.U employee sent a first draft of the op-ed to Ms. Heard, and during the editing process with her lawyers, mention of her marriage and successful application for a temporary restraining order were excised, Mr. Dougherty testified. “We had hope,” Mr. Whigham said, “and it became clear to me in early 2019 that it was over.” An email from a communications department employee there suggested that Ms. Heard write an article about how victims of gender-based violence “have been made less safe under Trump and how people can take action,” and noted that Ms. Heard could weave in her personal story. During cross-examination one of Ms. Heard’s lawyers, Ben Rottenborn, confronted Mr. Depp with text messages he had written describing Ms. Heard with obscenities, and calling her a “worthless hooker” at one point. The agreement was verbal, not formally written out into a contract, Mr. Whigham testified, but in early 2019, it became clear to him that Disney would be “going in a different direction.” After news broke in 2016 that Ms. Heard had been granted a temporary restraining order against him, citing allegations of spousal abuse, Mr. Depp said, he felt a responsibility to clear his name. Ms. Heard testified that the first time Mr. Depp hit her was several years after they first met in 2009, when she auditioned for “The Rum Diary,” a movie in which she ended up playing his love interest. Ms. Heard described more than a dozen other instances in which she says Mr. Depp was violent toward her, every one of which he denies. Mr. Depp claimed that Ms. Heard’s op-ed “devastated” his career and reputation.

Johnny Depp has been awarded $US10.35 million ($14.3 million) in his defamation lawsuit against his former wife, Amber Heard, who was awarded $US2 million ...

In the case, Mr Depp had to prove not only that he never assaulted Ms Heard, but that Ms Heard's article — which focused primarily on public policy related to domestic violence — defamed him. They found she was defamed by one of them, in which the lawyer claimed that she and friends "spilled a little wine and roughed the place up, got their stories straight" and called the police. The jury also found in favour of Ms Heard, who said she was defamed by Mr Depp's lawyer when he called her abuse allegations a hoax. - Ms Heard says she is "heartbroken" and Mr Depp said he was "truly humbled" Mr Depp had accused Ms Heard of several acts of violence during the trial as she also claimed of him. Johnny Depp has won his defamation case against his former wife Amber Heard after a jury found that a statement that Ms Heard made about domestic abuse in a 2018 opinion piece clearly referred to the actor.

Johnny Depp won his defamation case against his ex-wife Amber Heard on Wednesday, and the jury awarded him $15 million in damages. Depp was awarded $10 million ...

The jury reached a verdict, and it is set to be read in about 90 minutes. "Someone who survived abuse and didn’t allow his name to be tarnished by lies," the user wrote. It sets back the clock to a time when a woman who spoke up and spoke out could be publicly shamed and humiliated. I also hope that the position will now return to innocent until proven guilty, both within the courts and in the media. The comment section also celebrated the victory, with some writing "I'm so proud" and "Justice was served." Just before 2 p.m. ET, the hashtag "#JusticeForJohnnyDepp" began to trend with more than 40,000 tweets. It sets back the idea that violence against women is to be taken seriously. I hope that my quest to have the truth be told will have helped others, men or women, who have found themselves in my situation, and that those supporting them never give up. From the very beginning, the goal of bringing this case was to reveal the truth, regardless of the outcome. The jury also awarded Heard $2 million in compensatory damages. 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. In interviews with NBC News on Wednesday, three PR and crisis communications professionals said they felt confident that Depp could get his big-screen acting career back on track.

The verdict in the defamation case between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard made big news, but a high-profile lawyer says "it's almost inevitable" the dispute ...

And I don't see a clear legal error made by the judge in this case. But in relation to juries, it's very often, more often than not, successful." That has to change." She says she faces regular abuse and death threats due to the legal proceedings. "Essentially, what that means is deny that you did anything wrong if you're the abuser, and say that actually, you are the abused and not the abuser," he said. "In this particular case, I think it is likely to be the legal problems," he said. "Myself, I think that there is likely to be an adjustment to the award." "Amber Heard can certainly appeal, but there's not a very good basis for appeal, and if she does, interest will start to accrue on the judgement," Mr Rahmani said. "There were quite a lot of legal and procedural errors that the judge in Virginia seems to have caused." "We are going to be left in this situation where Johnny Depp and Amber Heard have had their reputations trashed," he said. "I think it's almost inevitable that Amber Heard would have to appeal this verdict," Mr Stephens told the ABC. Mr Depp smiled for photos with patrons and staff and was filmed first-bumping a member of the public as he was guided from the venue, shaking hands with a man who yelled "we love you Johnny ... I love you bro" as he left.

Jurors in US court ruled in favour of Depp's claim of defamation on three counts after seven-week trial.

It sets back the clock to a time when a woman who spoke up and spoke out could be publicly shamed and humiliated. I think within a year or two, we’re going to have a more definitive answer and outcome in this case.” She succeeded on only one count and was awarded $2m.

A jury has reached a verdict in the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial, finding that Heard defamed her ex-husband in a 2018 op-ed published by The Washington ...

And she said, 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. And so the jury ruled with Heard on 1 of 3 claims of defamation, so just one. And Depp, by the way, was not even in the courtroom. The jury awarded Johnny Depp a grand total of $15 million - 10 million in compensatory damages and 5 million in punitive damages. Of course, at issue was a 2018 op-ed written by Amber Heard that was published in The Washington Post. That was the basis of this lawsuit from Depp, whether Heard had defamed him in the piece that ran from the Post. Over the course of this case, both movie stars accused each other of multiple forms of domestic and sexual violence, ranging from cutting off a finger to leaving unspeakable things in a bed.

A jury has reached a verdict in the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial, finding that Heard defamed her ex-husband in a 2018 op-ed published by The Washington ...

And she said, 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. And so the jury ruled with Heard on 1 of 3 claims of defamation, so just one. And Depp, by the way, was not even in the courtroom. The jury awarded Johnny Depp a grand total of $15 million - 10 million in compensatory damages and 5 million in punitive damages. Of course, at issue was a 2018 op-ed written by Amber Heard that was published in The Washington Post. That was the basis of this lawsuit from Depp, whether Heard had defamed him in the piece that ran from the Post. Over the course of this case, both movie stars accused each other of multiple forms of domestic and sexual violence, ranging from cutting off a finger to leaving unspeakable things in a bed.

Depp won $15 million in court today, so what have we learned amidst the screaming?

Minutes after the trial ended, our inboxes began filling with PR offers for legal consultants to talk to, takes to mine, and even a list of bookmaker’s odds for questions like “Who will Amber Heard get engaged to next?” (Johnny Depp is, blessedly, at the bottom of the list.) It’s part of what made Saturday Night Live’s typically tone-deaf assertion that the trial is “for fun” so asinine, because none of this feels fun. At the risk of editorializing more than we’re going to editorialize super hardcore here in a minute, we’ll just go ahead and say it: It’s a good thing that Johnny Depp and Amber Heard are not married anymore. The details of the trial have become slippery and meaningless, even as its existence as The Content has become paramount. It’s the functional apotheosis of the principle that you’re not really alive in 2022 unless you’ve expressed an opinion on something—and the louder, less-informed, and more misogynistic, the better. The core of Depp’s case, money-wise, was that Heard’s allegations in her Washington Post op-ed cost him a lot of cash—which does, in loose terms, appear to be at least somewhat true. In case you somehow missed the screaming—exultant, despairing, confused, good old-fashioned “This is my voice at the height of its capacity for volume because I need to remind myself I exist,” etc., take your pick— the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trial delivered its verdict today.

The jury also found in favor of Heard, who said she was defamed by Depp's lawyer when he called her abuse allegations a hoax. Jury members found Depp should be ...

(Heard and Depp’s teams each blame the other.) He was also replaced as the title character in the third “Fantastic Beasts” spin-off film, “The Crimes of Grindelwald.” In the Virginia case, Depp had to prove not only that he never assaulted Heard, but that Heard’s article — which focused primarily on public policy related to domestic violence — defamed him. Both performers emerge from the trial with reputations in tatters with unclear prospects for their careers. He’d take my life from me,” Heard said in her final testimony. While the case was ostensibly about libel, most of the testimony focused on whether Heard had been physically and sexually abused, as she claimed. The verdicts bring an end to a televised trial that Depp had hoped would help restore his reputation, though it turned into a spectacle of a vicious marriage.

Many victims of domestic violence who watched the trial will likely conclude that, if they share their experiences, they will be disbelieved, shamed, ...

In a previous piece, I wrote about how this trial evoked revenge porn in forcing the defendant to document and participate in her own spectacular humiliation in front of a judge, a jury, and the viewers at home. In March, Depp’s longtime buddy Marilyn Manson, who is godfather to Depp’s daughter, filed a defamation lawsuit against the actress Evan Rachel Wood, who has publicly accused Manson of emotional abuse and rape. The burden of proof rested with Depp’s side to demonstrate that Heard had engineered an abuse hoax across several years, that the “defamatory implication” of her op-ed “was designed and intended by Ms. Heard,” and that she had acted “with actual malice,” which the Supreme Court, in New York Times Co. v. To “research” the case only required glancing at TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, or Instagram, where Heard was cast as the delusional harpy and Depp as the lovable rogue. If Depp’s prime motivation in bringing the suit against Heard was to embarrass and stigmatize her, then he would have won, regardless of the verdict; that he became a men’s-rights folk hero in the process may have come as a surprise even to him. On Wednesday, a panel of five men and two women found that Heard defamed Depp in an op-ed for the Post, in December, 2018, by referring to herself as “representing domestic abuse,” by stating that she witnessed “how institutions protect men accused of abuse,” and by tweeting a link to the online version of the op-ed, which carried the headline “I spoke up against sexual violence—and faced our culture’s wrath. If a man says a woman beat him, they never believe him.” They could not present evidence in Heard’s favor that the judge, Penney Azcarate, ruled out as hearsay, including testimony from seven medical professionals that Heard had reported contemporaneous episodes of abuse to them and a series of text messages from one of Depp’s employees, Stephen Deuters, in which Deuters appears to acknowledge that Depp physically harmed Heard on an airplane. (As Amanda Hess wrote, in the Times, “I did not follow the defamation trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard—it followed me.”) “One time, ladies and gentlemen, one time—if he abused her one time, Amber wins,” Rottenborn told the jury. The pivotal twelve words in the 2018 op-ed were “Then two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse.” This is an accurate statement, but Depp argued that Heard was able to make that statement only because she had lied and faked her injuries when she sought the restraining order. They did not succeed in moving the case from Virginia, where Depp filed suit and where the Post’s servers are situated, to California, where Depp and Heard reside, where much of their relationship unfolded, and where legal protections (known as anti-SLAPP laws) for people who speak up on matters of public interest—such as preventing domestic violence—are significantly stronger than in Virginia. They could not get the case dismissed after the High Court in London, in 2020, ruled against Depp in his libel claim against the tabloid the Sun, which called him a “wife beater”; the judge in that case found that twelve of Heard’s fourteen abuse accusations as presented in court were proven to be “substantially true.” They could not exclude from the jury pool a man who read out the following text from his wife: “Amber is psychotic. (The jury also found that Depp was liable for defamatory statements that his former attorney Adam Waldman had made about Heard and her friends staging a scene of alleged abuse; they awarded Heard two million in damages.) Heard did not write the headline, and, in the article, she specified that she had been “sexually assaulted by the time I was of college age”—long before she met Depp, who has denied ever hitting or assaulting Heard. In fact, Heard does not name Depp at all in the Post piece, which was proposed and initially drafted by the A.C.L.U., and which argued for reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act and for preserving Title IX protections against sexual assault in schools.

In this post-#MeToo moment, misogyny and celebrity go hand in hand.

Johnny Depp is being embraced as a hero in some quarters, but his victory extends even to those who will allow themselves to feel troubled by the outcome of the trial and then move on. And while he accused Heard of doing terrible things to him in the course of their relationship and breakup, the lawsuit wasn’t about those things. Some of us may wince a little when we watch “Pirates of the Caribbean” or “Donnie Brasco,” but we’ll probably still watch. The mobs of social media mobilize against women with special frequency and ferocity, often using the language of righteous grievance. That he came off as a guy unable to control his temper or his appetites was seen, by many of the most vocal social media users, to enhance his credibility, while Heard’s every tear or gesture was taken to undermine hers. His offscreen peccadilloes (the drinking, the drugs, the “Winona Forever” tattoo) have been part of the pop-cultural background noise for much of that time, classified along with the scandals and shenanigans that have been a Hollywood sideshow since the silent era. We want them to be bad boys, to break the rules and get away with it. A few years later, it seems more likely that they were sacrificed not to end that system of entitlement but rather to preserve it. The convention of courtroom journalism is to make a scruple of indeterminacy. He brought with him into the courtroom the well-known characters he has played, a virtual entourage of lovable rogues, misunderstood artists and gonzo rebels. I don’t mean that women always tell the truth, that men are always guilty as charged, or that due process isn’t the bedrock of justice. The Johnny Depp-Amber Heard defamation trial was, from gavel to gavel, a singularly baffling, unedifying and sad spectacle.

Johnny Depp's legal victory and the death of Roe v. Wade are part of the same toxic cultural movement.

This trial, the narrative goes, is a necessary corrective to the #BelieveWomen hashtag that trended in the heady early days of Me Too: The point is not to believe all women, but to believe all victims, including male victims. Meanwhile, the Me Too movement itself was a response to the election of Donald Trump, which came even after Trump was heard on tape boasting about sexually assaulting multiple women. Meanwhile, when a court found Amber Heard should be required to pay $15 million to a man who compelling evidence suggests abused her, the hashtag #AmberTurd trended on Twitter. This verdict is as much as to say that anyone who says the phrase “I was abused” can be sued as a liar, and is highly likely to have a chilling effect on other victims of domestic violence who might want to step forward. The official Twitter account of House Judiciary GOP celebrated with a victorious GIF of Depp in full Jack Sparrow regalia. The political action of the 1970s met the reactionary work of Phyllis Schlafly and her cohort, who killed the Equal Rights Amendment. The girl-power ethos of ’90s third-wave feminism gave way to the virginity-obsessed purity culture of the Bush era.

Amber Heard's lawyer said Thursday the actress cannot afford to pay the roughly $10 million judgment she owes ex-husband Johnny Depp, after a Virginia court ...

Terence Dougherty, an executive representing the American Civil Liberties Union, which Heard was an ambassador for and helped her craft the op-ed, testified about a donation Heard pledged to the organization after she received a $7 million from her divorce from Depp. Heard promised $3.5 million to the ACLU, though only $1.3 million has been given to the organization so far. Dougherty said he believed one of the funds was backed by Elon Musk, who Heard had a relationship with after she split from Depp. Heard paused her donations to the ACLU in 2019 because she was having “financial difficulties,” Dougherty said. Terence Dougherty, an executive representing the American Civil Liberties Union, which Heard was an ambassador for and helped her craft the op-ed, testified about a donation Heard pledged to the organization after she received a $7 million from her divorce from Depp. Heard promised $3.5 million to the ACLU, though only $1.3 million has been given to the organization so far. Dougherty said he believed one of the funds was backed by Elon Musk, who Heard had a relationship with after she split from Depp. Heard paused her donations to the ACLU in 2019 because she was having “financial difficulties,” Dougherty said. There’s no way they couldn’t have been influenced by it," Bredehoft said. They have families.