MOVIE NEWS – Amber Heard’s lawyers are seeking to overturn the defamation trial verdict, claiming that one juror failed to meet legal standards.

 

 

In her latest move after losing her defamation trial with ex-husband Johnny Depp, Amber Heard seeks to have the verdict overturned. Based on an opinion piece by Heard in 2018, Depp sued the Aquaman star for defamation, claiming that his ex-wife’s writing was untrue and damaged his career. Heard counter-sued and insisted that she was telling the truth, arguing that Depp had defamed her by claiming that he was the one who had abused her.

In any case, the jury found Heard guilty of all three alleged defamation charges and agreed with Depp that his domestic violence allegations were “false and defamatory”.

The jury awarded Depp $15 million in damages (later reduced to $10.35 million). Depp was also found liable on one of the three counts of defamation in Amber Heard’s counterclaim and ordered to pay $2 million. Given the damages to be paid, the court’s verdict was widely seen as a significant victory for Johnny Depp.

However, Heard’s legal team made a considerable effort to overturn the verdict. According to TMZ, they have officially filed new documentation in Virginia asking the judge to either throw out the verdict, dismiss the case, or order a whole new trial with a different jury. One of the biggest arguments raised in the documents claims that there is insufficient evidence that Amber Heard’s writing harmed Depp’s career.

She argues that his own behaviour had already overshadowed him in the public eye by 2018.

Heard’s lawyers also argue that Depp’s team could not prove that she acted maliciously when she wrote the opinion piece, nor could they prove that Amber Heard did not actually believe what she wrote in the Washington Post article.

In another bizarre twist in the never-ending legal battle, Heard’s lawyers also claim that one of the jurors was not legitimate. The unnamed juror, listed as Juror No. 15, has a birth year of 1945. The Heard team claims the juror is much younger than that, allegedly born in 1970. Whatever the case, Heard’s lawyers say that if the juror was not truthful, the verdict should be set aside, and the trial should proceed with a new jury, which the court has vetted more thoroughly.

So the legal battle continues; the ball is now in the judge’s court as Amber Heard moves to dismiss the verdict.

Source: TMZ