The trial in Johnny Depp’s defamation lawsuit towards Amber Heard has drawn to an in depth, with a civil jury handing an amazing victory to Johnn Depp.
Depp sued Heard in March 2019, alleging a column Heard wrote in The Washington Post about home violence was defamatory and asking for $50m in damages. Heard filed a $100m countersuit.
After a six-week trial in Fairfax, Virginia, the jury returned a verdict on 1 June after deliberabating for round two-and-a-half days.
Here is a timeline of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s relationship, separation, and court docket battles, from when they’re stated to have began courting to the most recent trial:
2012: Johnny Depp and Amber Heard begin courting
Johnny Depp and Amber Heard are believed to have began courting that yr, after Depp cut up from his longtime accomplice, French actor Vanessa Paradis. Depp and Paradis have two youngsters: a daughter named Lily-Rose and a son named Jack.
Heard and Depp are believed to have met on the set of the 2011 movie The Rum Diary, wherein they each starred.
March 2014: Johnny Depp and Amber Heard get engaged
Johnny Depp confirms that he and Amber Heard are engaged, after a few months of hypothesis. “The fact that I’m wearing a chick’s ring on my finger is probably a dead giveaway,” he says whereas selling the movie Transcendence. “Not very subtle.”
February 2015: Johnny Depp and Amber Heard get married
Amber Heard and Johnny Depp marry. According to People journal, that they had two ceremonies: the primary at Depp’s house in Los Angeles, and the second at Depp’s non-public island within the Bahamas.
May 2016: Amber Heard recordsdata for divorce
Amber Heard recordsdata for divorce from Johnny Depp, citing irreconcilable variations. That identical month, a choose grants Heard a restraining order towards Depp over allegations of home violence on his half.
In a sworn declaration, Heard alleges that Depp threw a cellphone at her throughout a battle, which struck her within the eye and the cheek, and that he screamed at her, hit her, violently grabbed her face, and pulled her hair. According to The Associated Press, she submits to the court docket a photograph of her bruised face when requesting the restraining order.
Heard is seen with “a bruise on her right cheek below the eye”, per the AP, throughout a court docket look.
“During the entirety of our relationship, Johnny has been verbally and physically abusive to me,” Heard writes within the submitting. “I endured excessive emotional, verbal and physical abuse from Johnny, which has included angry, hostile, humiliating and threatening assaults to me whenever I questioned his authority or disagreed with him.”
She additionally writes: “I live in fear that Johnny will return to (our house) unannounced to terrorize me, physically and emotionally.”
Depp has denied the allegations of home abuse. His attorneys alleged in a court docket doc in 2016 that Heard was “attempting to secure a premature financial resolution by alleging abuse”.
The LAPD stated in May 2016 that law enforcement officials who responded to a home incident radio name on the 21 of that month discovered “no evidence of any crime”. Heard’s authorized crew has since subpoenaed the LAPD in connection to that very same name as a part of the continued defamation court docket case opposing Heard and Depp.
August 2016: Johnny Depp and Amber Heard settle their divorce
After months of contentious proceedings, Depp and Heard attain a settlement of their divorce.
“Our relationship was intensely passionate and at times volatile, but always bound by love,” the pair say in a joint assertion on the time. “Neither party has made false accusations for financial gain. There was never any intent of physical or emotional harm.”
Heard pledges to donate the $7m from Depp to the American Civil Liberties Union and the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. (In August 2021, a New York choose partially granted a petition from Depp to find out whether or not donations had been made.)
January 2017: The divorce is official
Depp and Heard formally finalize their divorce.
“We are all pleased to put this unpleasant chapter in Mr Depp and his family’s lives behind them,” Depp’s lawyer Laura Wasser writes in an announcement. “Having his request for entry of the dissolution judgment granted today made it a particularly lucky Friday the 13th.”
Heard’s lawyer tells Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Carl H Moor that his consumer “would be very happy to move on with her life”.
June 2018: Johnny Depp sues over The Sun headline
On 1 June 2018, Depp sues News Group Newspapers, the corporate that publishes The Sun, for alleged libel over an article printed within the tabloid newspaper in April of that yr, with the headline: “Gone Potty: How can JK Rowling be ‘genuinely happy’ casting wife beater Johnny Depp in the new Fantastic Beasts film?”
Depp would ultimately lose the case.
December 2018: Amber Heard publishes an op-ed
On 18 December 2018, Amber Heard publishes an op-ed in The Washington Post titled: “I spoke up against sexual violence — and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change.”
In it, she writes partly: “Like many women, I had been harassed and sexually assaulted by the time I was of college age. But I kept quiet — I did not expect filing complaints to bring justice. And I didn’t see myself as a victim.
“Then two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out.”
Depp isn’t talked about by title within the op-ed. The op-ed would later turn into the premise of the $50m defamation lawsuit filed by Depp naming Heard as a defendant.
March 2019: Johnny Depp sues Amber Heard
Depp recordsdata a $50m lawsuit towards Heard, alleging she defamed him in her Washington Post op-ed.
“The op-ed depended on the central premise that Ms Heard was a domestic abuse victim and that Mr Depp perpetrated domestic violence against her,” the criticism alleges partly, calling the declare of home abuse “categorically and demonstrably false”.
July 2020: Johnny Depp’s lawsuit towards The Sun goes to trial
The trial opens on 7 July 2020 in London. Johnny Depp and Amber Heard each arrive on the High Court of Justice, with Heard scheduled to testify in help of The Sun.
Depp’s attorneys argue he’s looking for “vindication”, not cash, and Depp himself denies the allegations of home abuse. A spokesperson for Heard tells Vanity Fair Heard “never asked for these proceedings to take place” and “has tried to move on with her life”.
The trial lasts for 3 weeks, with explosive allegations rising as a part of the proof and testimony. The proceedings wrap up on the finish of July.
August 2020: Amber Heard countersues
Heard recordsdata a $100m countersuit towards Depp in response to his libel lawsuit, accusing him of allegedly orchestrating a “smear campaign” towards her and describing his personal lawsuit as a continuation of “abuse and harassment.”
In the submitting, Heard asks the court docket to grant her immunity from Depp’s criticism and asks for compensatory damages of “not more than $100m”, specifying that is “twice the amount Mr Depp asserted against Ms Heard.”
November 2020: Johnny Depp loses his libel battle towards The Sun
The court docket guidelines in favour of The Sun within the libel lawsuit. Justice Andrew Nicol stated the defendants proved that their allegations towards Depp have been “substantially true,” The Associated Press stories on the time.
“I have found that the great majority of alleged assaults of Ms. Heard by Mr. Depp have been proved to the civil standard,” the choose writes in a ruling.
An lawyer for Depp calls the judgment “so flawed that it would be ridiculous for Mr Depp not to appeal this decision”.
March 2021: Johnny Depp is denied permission to attraction loss in The Sun case
Two court docket of attraction judges discover towards granting Depp permission to attraction the choose’s determination in his libel swimsuit towards The Sun.
Per the AP, Justices James Dingemans and Nicholas Underhill dominated that the unique listening to was “full and fair” and the choose’s rulings “have not been shown even arguably to be vitiated by any error of approach or mistake of law.”
Dingemans and Underhill discovered that “the appeal has no real prospect of success and that there is no other compelling reason for it to be heard.”
“It is clear from a reading of the judgment as a whole that the judge based his conclusions on each of the incidents on his extremely detailed review of the evidence specific to each incident,” they stated.
“In an approach of that kind there was little need or room for the judge to give weight to any general assessment of Ms Heard’s credibility.”
11 April 2022: Defamation case goes to trial in Virginia
The trial in Depp’s defamation case towards Heard started on 11 April 2022 in Fairfax, Virginia. (The Washington Post, wherein Heard’s op-ed was printed, has printing services within the state.)
Depp suffered a big setback earlier than the trial started when the choose within the case, Virginia Judge Penney Azcarate, discovered that Heard may argue that her op-ed offers with a matter of public curiosity.
Per the AP, Depp’s authorized crew had tried to argue that Heard shouldn’t have the ability to depend on Virginia’s anti-SLAPP laws. Anti-SLAPP legal guidelines, which stand for anti-Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, are designed to guard individuals from being sued after they converse out on issues of public curiosity.
Judge Azcarate dominated that Heard may, in reality, invoke Virginia’s anti-SLAPP laws in her defence and argue to the jury that it ought to apply to her op-ed.
1 June 2022: Depp prevails in US defamation trial
The jury within the Fairfax case introduced its verdict seven weeks after the start of the trial.
Jurors discovered that Heard had defamed Depp in three statements and awarded him greater than $10m in damages.
As a part of Heard’s counter-suit, additionally they discovered {that a} lawyer for Depp defamed Heard in certainly one of three statements highlighted within the submitting. Heard was awarded $2m in damages.
Source: www.unbiased.co.uk