Amber Heard wants to appeal or throw out the verdict in the high-profile defamation lawsuit between her and ex-husband Johnny Depp. The motion calls for a new trial, a new verdict, or a dismissal of Depp’s complaint.
In a filing in the Virginia court on July 1, the actress’s legal team claimed the ruling had issues with an improperly vetted jury and an excessive sum of damage that was awarded to Depp.
In June, a seven-person civil jury ruled in favour of Depp in a split verdict. The jury found that Heard had defamed Depp in a 2018 op-ed in The Washington Post where she accused him of domestic abuse. The court ordered Heard to pay Depp $15m in punitive and compensatory damages.
In the Virginia court documents, Heard’s attorney Elaine Bredehoft said the case “rests on flawed legal logic,” arguing Depp’s team “proceeded solely on a defamation by implication theory, abandoning any claims that Ms Heard’s statements were actually false”.
Bredehoft also argued that Mr Depp’s legal team said it would focus on the period after the op-ed, but proceeded to include events from 2016.
The filing states that there appears to be a 25-year discrepancy between Juror 15’s birthday on court records and in publicly available information, raising questions about the vetting procedure.
Ben Chew, who leads “The Pirates of the Caribbean” actor’s legal team said the appeal was “what we expected, just longer, no more substantive.”
