Johnny Depp defamation case against Amber Heard in Fairfax, Virginia. (Reuters pictures)
Johnny Depp won his defamation case against ex-wife Amber Heard on Tuesday. Here’s how Heard reacted.
Amber Heard has reacted after she lost the defamation case against her ex-husband, Johnny Depp. On Tuesday night, the jury in the dramatic legal battle, which was underway at the Fairfax County, Virginia for six weeks, announced that Johnny has successfully proven that Amber had defamed him when she wrote a 2018 Washington Post op-ed alluding to her past claims of domestic violence. Heard is now ordered to pay USD 15 million in damages to Depp.
Heard said that she’s disappointed “beyond words” regarding the verdict to Depp’s defamation lawsuit against her. “The disappointment I feel today is beyond words,” Heard wrote in a statement. “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.”
Heard continued, “I’m even more disappointed with what this verdict means for other women. It is a setback. It sets back the clock to a time when a woman who spoke up and spoke out could be publicly shamed and humiliated. It sets back the idea that violence against women is to be taken seriously.”
“I believe Johnny’s attorneys succeeded in getting the jury to overlook the key issue of Freedom of Speech and ignore evidence that was so conclusive that we won in the U.K.,” Heard concluded. “I’m sad I lost this case. But I am sadder still that I seem to have lost a right I thought I had as an American — to speak freely and openly.”
In March 2019, Depp filed his USD 50 million defamation lawsuit against Heard, who he was married to from February 2015 to January 2017, after she wrote a 2018 Washington Post essay in which she described herself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse.”
