Amber Heard has formally appealed the choice within the defamation case introduced by Johnny Depp, along with her attorneys citing what they imagine to be quite a few errors dedicated at trial, together with permitting the case to be heard in Virginia and refusing to permit communications between Heard and sure medical doctors to be admitted as proof.
The “Pirates of the Caribbean” star in June was awarded $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages — the latter decreased to $350,000 consistent with Virginia statute — after Heard was discovered accountable for defaming him in an essay revealed by the Washington Post.
Heard, who had filed a countersuit, was awarded $2 million on the similar time after the jury discovered Depp accountable for a remark made about Heard by his then-attorney Adam Waldman.
Heard’s attraction was filed Nov. 23 with the Court of Appeals in Virginia.
Depp initially sued the “Aquaman” actor for $50 million in March 2019, alleging that an essay revealed by the Washington Post — whose servers are in Virginia — dubbed him a perpetrator of “sexual violence” and price him tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars}’ value of misplaced work.
She countersued for $100 million in summer season of 2020, although lawyer Elaine Bredehoft later stated that Heard did not need that a lot cash however quite needed to ship a message to her former husband.
In the attraction, Heard’s authorized crew alleges that California was the one acceptable venue for the trial and states that Virginia was a “completely inconvenient forum” for the case, with “both parties and most of the fact witnesses … located in California, with none of them located in Virginia.”
The attraction alleges errors surrounding proof have been made, together with exclusion of the November 2020 resolution within the U.Okay. defamation case that Depp introduced unsuccessfully towards the Sun, which had labeled him a “wife beater.”
The attraction claims irrelevant and prejudicial proof was allowed, whereas third-party communications that allegedly went to each events’ states of thoughts — together with Heard’s communications with medical personnel — have been excluded.
Among the opposite claims made within the attraction: Depp’s authorized crew allegedly didn’t show “actual malice”; the jury was improperly instructed concerning the function of precise malice within the case; Heard did not write the web model of the headline that was mentioned in court docket; the award was extreme; and the essay itself, which didn’t point out Depp by identify, was “not reasonably capable of conveying a defamatory implication.”
While each events filed preliminary attraction paperwork in July, Depp’s detailed submitting did not come till early November. Now that Heard’s detailed submitting is in as effectively, the case will go to a three-judge court docket of appeals panel for selections.
If both Depp or Heard is unhappy with the appeals court docket’s resolution, they’ll petition Virginia’s Supreme Court.
