The Washington Submit on Thursday added an in depth editor’s be aware to the on-line model of Amber Heard’s 2018 op-ed on the heart of Johnny Depp’s explosive defamation trial.
The brand new addendum particulars how a Virginia jury on Tuesday discovered Heard liable on three counts stemming from her allegations of abuse, “which Depp claimed had been false and defamatory.”
The be aware then goes on to cite passages from Heard’s essay, which had been on the coronary heart of Depp’s $50 million lawsuit in opposition to his ex-wife:
- (1) “I spoke up in opposition to sexual violence — and confronted our tradition’s wrath. That has to vary.”
- (2) “Then two years in the past, I grew to become a public determine representing home abuse, and I felt the total drive of our tradition’s wrath for ladies who communicate out.”
- (3) “I had the uncommon vantage level of seeing, in actual time, how establishments defend males accused of abuse.”
Through the six-week trial that captivated — and divided — a nation, it emerged that the essay had been ghost-written by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Heard, who acted as “ambassador on girls’s rights” on the nonprofit group.
The op-ed didn't explicitly title Depp as an abuser, and Heard testified that the essay was not about her ex-husband.
“It’s not about Johnny. The one one who thought it was about Johnny is Johnny,” she testified.
However Depp’s attorneys argued that the op-ed clearly implicated him as an abuser by invoking a number of the claims Heard had made throughout his trial in opposition to the Solar tabloid within the UK in 2020 — a case that the actor misplaced.
Jurors in Virginia, nonetheless, discovered for Depp, 58, on all three of his defamation claims and he was awarded just below $10.4 million in damages.
Heard, 36, received on simply certainly one of her counterclaims, with the jury awarding her $2 million in damages for defamation by Depp’s former legal professional Adam Waldman.
The most recent from the Johnny Depp defamation trial:
Heard now has 30 days to enchantment the decision, which her legal professional Elaine Bredehoft mentioned she plans to do.
Questions have been raised whether or not the “Pirates of the Caribbean” star, who has accused Heard of utilizing the media to wreck his status and profession, would pursue authorized motion in opposition to the Washington Submit for publishing his ex-wife’s op-ed.
However Virginia lawyer Jeremiah Denton struck down the notion in an interview with The Submit.
“There's a honest report privilege, which supplies media retailers a specific amount of latitude in publishing one thing as a result of any person else mentioned it,” Denton mentioned. “[Heard] wrote that about him within the article they usually revealed the article. They're in all probability privileged for that.”
Denton additionally mentioned the statute of limitations in defamation circumstances is one yr which has handed.
Nevertheless, there's a legislation in Virginia that if somebody republishes the essay, which has now been discovered as defamatory, they may very well be responsible for defamation. If the Washington Submit republished it, then the outlet and heard may very well be “doubtlessly liable,” he mentioned.
Depp’s group didn't reply to The Submit’s request for a remark Thursday.
Further reporting by Priscilla DeGregory
Post a Comment