Actress Amber Heard is set to present 16 points in her appeal against Johnny Depp in their defamation trial. The American actress, along with her new legal team, has submitted a 16-point argument to the Court of Appeals of Virginia, contesting her ex-husband’s claims against her.
Heard, who currently owes Depp $10.3 million in damages, asserts that Depp misled the jury into believing that she was on trial for statements preceding her domestic abuse allegations. On the other hand, Depp, who only owes Heard $2 million following the trial, sued her for defamatory statements made in her 2018 Washington Post op-ed piece about sexual violence, which she argued did not directly name Depp as an abuser.
During the trial, Heard claimed that there was a lack of “clear and convincing evidence” for actual malice, the standard in a defamation case. She also criticized the court for allegedly failing to invalidate the damages awarded to both her and Depp after ruling that they had defamed each other.
Heard’s 16-point argument commences with a claim that the highly publicized defamation trial should have been dismissed and held in a more appropriate setting than Fairfax, Virginia. Furthermore, her legal team argued that the court erred in not allowing evidence regarding Depp’s lost defamation trial in the United Kingdom against his ex-wife and his subsequent statements.
They also condemned the court for allowing testimony about Heard’s alleged lie regarding donating $3.5 million to the ACLU from her divorce settlement. The core of her appeal revolves around the contention that the court wrongly permitted Depp to argue that damages could be awarded based on statements predating the publication of the 2018 op-ed piece.
Following the conclusion of the defamation trial, Depp was awarded a total of $8.35 million, while Heard won one of her three countersuit claims and was awarded $2 million in compensatory damages out of the $100 million she sought.
A day after Heard’s team filed an appeal, Depp’s team also lodged an appeal to contest the amount he owes to his ex-wife, aiming to ensure that “all information is considered by the court” as they return to consider Heard’s appeal.
