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Topics: TV And Film, Real Life
Topics: TV And Film, Real Life
In case you missed it, at the start of last month, Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s defamation trial reached a verdict - Heard was found liable in all three matters raised, and Depp was awarded $10 million in compensatory damages, and a further $350,000 in punitive damages (thanks, Variety).
As reported by ComicBook, Heard’s legal team has now filed some new documents in an attempt to ask the judge to overturn the verdict, claiming that it wasn’t supported by evidence. Additionally, and considerably more strangely, it also suggests that one of the jurors could have been an imposter, and much younger than his given age.
The new filing is reportedly 43 pages long, and suggests that Depp’s claims that he lost his role in the Pirates of the Caribbean series as a result of Heard’s op-ed article about domestic abuse weren’t true, and “proceeded solely on a defamation by implication theory, abandoning any claims that Ms. Heard’s statements were actually false.”
Then, as for the matter of the imposter juror, the document suggests that he wasn’t actually properly vetted by the court. He apparently had a listed birthdate of 1945, but, according to the filing, “was clearly born later than 1945”.
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“Publicly available information demonstrates that he appears to have been born in 1970,” it reads. “This discrepancy raises the question whether Juror 15 actually received a summons for jury duty and was properly vetted by the court to serve on the jury.”
What happens next remains to be seen - the filing apparently claims that since Heard and Depp had both defamed each other, the monetary award against Heard is excessive (she was awarded $2 million, as opposed to Depp’s $10 million). This is despite the fact that Depp was originally meant to be awarded $5 million in punitive damages, but had this reduced as a result of state law.