Johnny Depp vs Amber Heard: Love and War

Johnny Depp, as plaintiff, alleged three counts of defamation against defendant Amber Heard with claim for not less than $50 million in damages. Heard filed counterclaims against Depp with claim for not more than $100 million in damages.

After meeting in 2009, Depp and Heard were married in February 2015. In May 2016, at an early stage in their divorce process, Heard claimed that Depp had abused her physically, which he denied. In a separate libel trial, in which Depp sued News Group Newspapers Ltd over an article published in The Sun, the presiding judge ruled against Depp stating that "the great majority of alleged assaults of Ms Heard by Mr Depp have been proved to the civil standard. Several legal experts suggested that Depp had a smaller chance of winning in the US trial compared to the UK trial.

In the Virginia trial, Depp's claims related to a December 2018 op-ed by Heard, published in The Washington Post. Heard's statements in the op-ed included that she had spoken up against "sexual violence" and that "two years ago, she became a public figure representing domestic abuse" and Depp blamed the op-ed for new damage to his reputation and career.

Heard's counterclaims included allegations that a lawyer of Depp's had defamed her in statements published in the Daily Mail in 2020.[4] Throughout the trial, Depp's legal team sought to disprove Heard's abuse allegations and to demonstrate that she had been the instigator, rather than the victim, of intimate partner violence. Heard's lawyers defended the op-ed, claiming it was factual and protected by the First Amendment.

The livestreamed trial attracted large numbers of viewers and a considerable social media response, the majority of which was sympathetic to Depp and critical of Heard. News articles about the case generated high levels of social media interaction and renewed debates around topics relating to domestic violence, the #MeToo movement, and women's rights.

The seven member jury ruled that Heard's op-ed references to "sexual violence" and "domestic abuse" were false and defamed Depp with actual malice and awarded Depp $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages from Heard although the court reduced the punitive damages to $350,000 due to a limit imposed by Virginia state law.

The jury also ruled that Waldman (Depp's lawyer) had defamed Heard by falsely alleging that she and her friends "roughed up" Depp's penthouse as part of a "hoax". The jury awarded Heard $2 million in compensatory damages and zero in punitive damages from Depp.

Separately, the jury ruled that Waldman's other allegations of Heard's "sexual violence hoax" and "abuse hoax" against Depp had not been proven defamatory.