Amber Heard settles Defamation Case with Johnny Depp for $1 million
They announced the settlement of their bitter defamation case on Monday, with Amber Heard agreeing to pay Johnny Depp $1 million to resolve allegations that he physically mistreated her.
Heard announced her decision to not appeal the $10 million compensation that a jury had ordered her to make in an Instagram post, saying that she “simply cannot go through” another trial.
She finally decided to settle the defamation complaint after much internal debate.
The 36-year-old added, “I make this decision having lost faith in the American legal system, where my unprotected testimony served as entertainment and social media fodder,”
“Now I finally have an opportunity to emancipate myself from something I attempted to leave over six years ago and on terms I can agree to,” she said. “I have made no admission. This is not an act of concession.”
In a six-week trial that rode on hotly contested charges of domestic abuse, a Virginia jury found both Depp and Heard responsible for slander. However, the jury sided more heavily with the “Pirates of the Carribean” actor.
Damages for Depp were set at $10.35 million, while Heard’s were set at $2 million by the jury.
Benjamin Chew and Camille Vasquez, Depp’s attorneys, said, “We are pleased to formally close the door on this painful chapter for Mr. Depp, who made clear throughout this process that his priority was about bringing the truth to light,”
Judgment in favour of Mr. Depp against Ms. Heard, as reached by a unanimous jury, is completely in effect.
According to the article, “Ms. Heard’s acceptance of the conclusion of the legal system’s arduous fight for justice is reinforced by the payment of $1 million, which Mr. Depp is committing and will (really) donate to charities.”
In a December 2018 op-ed for The Washington Post, Heard referred to herself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse,” which Depp took offence to and used as the basis for his lawsuit against Heard.
Heard, a native Texan, did not identify Depp by name in the article, but he nevertheless sued her for $50 million because she implied he was a domestic abuser.
Heard countersued for $100 million, claiming that Depp’s attorney, Adam Waldman, defamed her by calling her allegations of abuse a “hoax” in the Daily Mail.
Lurid and personal facts about the private lives of the Hollywood stars were broadcast live to an audience of millions.
Heard wrote on Instagram “defended my truth and in doing so my life as I knew it was destroyed.
She explained “The vilification I have faced on social media is an amplified version of the ways in which women are revictimised when they come forward,”
“I was exposed to a type of humiliation that I simply cannot relive.
“Even if my US appeal is successful, the best outcome would be a retrial where a new jury would have to consider the evidence again,” she said. “I simply cannot go through that for a third time.”
Variety, a media outlet, reported that Heard had initially claimed domestic abuse in 2016, during her divorce from the “Edward Scissorhands” actor.
She received $7 million in a settlement, and the case was dropped in exchange for the parties’ signing of non-disparagement and non-disclosure agreements.