The actress Amber Heard announced on Monday that she did not intend to pursue her appeal of the defamation case involving her ex-husband, Johnny Depp. She wrote in an Instagram post that she had decided to settle the long-running dispute following a loss at trial earlier this year. The case involved allegations that Johnny Depp had made defamatory statements about Amber Heard.
Benjamin Chew and Camille Vasquez, attorneys representing Mr. Depp, issued a statement in which they claimed that Ms. Heard agreed to pay $1 million to conclude the lawsuit. This amount is much less than the jury ruling that required her to pay more than $8 million in damages.
When Ms. Heard referred to herself in an opinion piece published in 2018 by The Washington Post as a “public figure symbolising domestic violence,” the jury in Virginia came to the conclusion that she had slandered Mr. Depp. This verdict was handed down in June. More than ten million dollars in damages were granted to Mr. Depp by the jury. However, the jury also decided that Mr. Depp had defamed Ms. Heard via a statement made by his lawyer and awarded Ms. Heard two million dollars in compensation for her loss.
Both parties had filed appeals about the aspects of the case in which they had been found guilty, which suggested that a drawn-out and expensive struggle was on the horizon at the Virginia Court of Appeals.
According to what was said in her article, “after a great deal of contemplation I have taken a very painful choice to settle the defamation action launched against me by my ex-husband in Virginia.”
“We are pleased to formally close the door on this terrible chapter for Mr. “Both the judgement reached by the jury as a whole and the ensuing judgement in Mr. Depp’s favour against Ms. Heard have been upheld in their entirety.”
According to Mr. Depp’s attorneys, he intended to give the cash to a charitable organisation.
The attorneys for Ms. Heard did not reply quickly to our requests for comment.
The livestreamed trial became a fixation on the internet for weeks, with the majority of the hostility directed against Ms. Heard. Her allegations of sexual assault and domestic abuse were the topic of memes and derision on the internet. In her article, Ms. Heard alluded to the fact that the bullying she experienced online had a role in influencing her decision to abandon her appeal.
The statement included something along the lines of, “The vilification I have encountered on social media is an enhanced version of the manner in which women are re-victimized when they come forward.” “I make this choice having lost trust in the American judicial system, where my unprotected testimony functioned as entertainment and social media fodder,” she said. “I make this decision having lost faith in the American legal system.”
In the article, she claimed that the conditions of the agreement did not include any limitations on what she might say about the investigation.
Throughout the whole of the trial, Mr. Depp presented Ms. Heard as the abusive party in their relationship, despite the fact that he has consistently denied assaulting Ms. Heard.
For a number of years, Mr. Depp and Ms. Heard have been embroiled in the court actions that surround the accusations. A court in Britain came to the conclusion that there was sufficient evidence to support the allegation that Mr. Depp had frequently abused Ms. Heard. This verdict was handed down in Mr. Depp’s libel case, which he had brought after the tabloid daily The Sun in the United Kingdom referred to him as a “wife abuser” in a headline. In that particular instance, the court came to the conclusion that the defendants had shown that what they had written was “essentially truthful.”
Ms. Heard said in her article that she was not willing to hear the accusations aired in a courtroom once again, which is a potential conclusion in the event that her appeal is successful.
Since Mr. Depp’s triumph in Virginia, he has slowly eased his way back into the public glare by participating in a fashion show that was supported by Rihanna and by working on films.
Ms. Heard has managed to avoid the public eye for the most majority of her career. In the federal court, she has been engaged in a legal battle with her insurance carrier, which has been attempting to absolve itself of any responsibility for bearing the expenses associated with the jury judgement. There was an instant lack of clarity over whether or not the insurance company would be responsible for the one million dollar payment.
