FALLS CHURCH, VA –
A Virginia judge on Wednesday rejected an attempt by actress Amber Heard to overturn a $10 million judgment awarded against her in favor of her ex-husband Johnny Depp.
Depp won a defamation lawsuit against Heard last month in a high-profile civil trial. Heard won a smaller $2 million judgment in a counterclaim she filed against Depp.
Earlier this month, Heard filed a motion to have Depp’s conviction overturned or declared a mistrial. Her attorneys cited multiple factors, including an apparent case of mistaken identity with one of the jurors.
In a written order, Judge Penny Azcarate dismissed all of Heard’s claims and said the jury question was irrelevant and that Heard could not prove she was prejudiced.
“The juror was examined, sat for the whole jury, deliberated and reached a verdict. The only evidence before this court is that this juror and all jurors followed their oaths, court instructions and orders. This court is bound by the jury’s competent verdict,” Azcarate wrote.
Depp is suing for $50 million in Fairfax County after Heard wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post about domestic violence in 2018, calling herself a “public figure representing domestic violence.” The article never mentioned Depp by name, but his lawyers said several passages in the article indirectly defamed him by referring to widespread allegations of abuse she made in 2016 when she filed for divorce.
Heard then countersued for US$100 million, also for defamation. By the time the case went to court, her counterclaim was reduced to a few statements made by one of Depp’s lawyers, who called Heard’s allegations of abuse a hoax.
The jury awarded Depp $15 million and Heard $2 million on her counterclaim. The $15 million judgment was reduced to $10.35 million because Virginia law limits punitive damages to $350,000.
The judge did not provide a rationale for dismissing Heard’s other claims in Wednesday’s order.
Among other things, Heard argued that the $10 million verdict was not supported by the facts and appeared to demonstrate that jurors failed to focus on the implications of the 2018 copyright material — as they were supposed to — and instead simply looked broadly at the damage Depp’s reputation suffered as a result of the alleged abuse.
Heard’s lawyers also argued that the convictions for Depp on the one hand and Heard on the other were fundamentally meaningless.
“The dueling jury verdicts are inconsistent and irreconcilable,” wrote her attorneys, Elaine Bredehoft and Benjamin Rothenborn.
Heard’s attorneys also challenged the conviction on the grounds that one of the seven jurors deciding the case was never summoned to the jury. A 77-year-old county resident received a jury summons, according to court documents. But the man’s son, who bears the same name and lives at the same address, responded to the draft and served in his stead.
Hurd’s attorneys argued that Virginia law is strict about juror identification and a case of mistaken identity is grounds for error. They did not present evidence that the 52-year-old son, identified in court documents only as Juror 15, purposefully or insidiously tried to replace his father, but they said the possibility should not be dismissed.
“The court cannot hold, as Mr. Depp asks it to do, that the apparently improper service of juror 15 was innocent error. It may have been a deliberate attempt to serve on a jury in a high-profile case,” Heard’s lawyers wrote.
Hurd still has the option of appealing the sentence to the Virginia Court of Appeals. The issues presented to the appeals court may be different from the issues Azcarate dismissed Wednesday.
In a separate order, the judge ordered dozens of court documents unsealed, including requests to compel independent medical examinations of Depp and Heard. A few documents will remain sealed, mostly because they contain personal contact information or personal medical information.
“In this matter both parties sued each other, thereby opening themselves to the public forum of a trial.” Court records are public information,” Azcarate wrote.
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Lavoie reported from Richmond.
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