VS’is the end of a bitter legal battle. Jurors in the trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, who accused each other of defamation, arrived on Wednesday 1er June to a verdict. The seven members of the jury answered “yes” to the question of whether the title and two passages of a forum, published in 2018 by Amber Heard, contained defamatory remarks with regard to Johnny Depp, according to the reading of their decision. The jury awarded the actor $15 million in damages.
Clearly, the seven jurors found that Amber Heard had made false statements by describing herself as a victim of domestic violence, and that she had acted “with malicious intent”.
Note that the $ 15 million in damages awarded to Johnny Depp are divided into two parts. A first amount of 10 million dollars corresponds to the compensatory damages, which Johnny Depp will be able to receive in full. A second amount of $5 million corresponds to punitive damages. And in this second case, the actor of Pirates of the Caribbean will only be able to receive 350,000 dollars because in the State of Virginia, where this ultra-media trial was held for six weeks, punitive damages are subject to a ceiling equivalent to this sum.
The seven jurors also ruled that Johnny Depp, 58, absent from the hearing, had also defamed his ex-wife Amber Heard, awarding $ 2 million in damages to the actress. The seven jurors indeed found that Johnny Depp’s lawyer, Adam Waldman, had made defamatory remarks by qualifying the allegations of sexual violence by Amber Heard as a “set-up” in the newspaper DailyMail in 2020.
Amber Heard “devastated”
The American actress, present in court in Virginia, welcomed the verdict with a serious face, seeming to accuse the blow. In a statement, she said she was “devastated” and felt “inexpressible disappointment”. “I am devastated that the mountain of evidence was not sufficient to address the far greater power, influence and ascendancy of my ex-husband,” she said shortly. after the verdict was read in a Virginia court. “I am even more disappointed with what this verdict means for other women. It’s a setback. It challenges the idea that violence against women should be taken seriously, she said.
Absent from the courtroom, Johnny Depp reacted to him in the form of a message posted on Instagram. “The jury brought me back to life. I am truly touched,” he said.
See this post on Instagram
