Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Dec 5: Amber Heard filed an appeal for a new trial against Pirates of the Caribbean actor Johnny Depp only a few weeks after Johnny Depp challenged her lone victory in the well publicised defamation lawsuit. The attorneys for the Aquaman star said in the appeal that the decision will have a ‘chilling effect’ on women who are attempting to speak out about the mistreatment of strong men.
After six weeks of hearings, the Virginia court ruled in favour of Johnny Depp in the defamation case involving Amber Heard in May. Deadline reports that the Aquaman actress has now requested a new trial.
The trial court wrongly declined to dismiss this lawsuit on the basis of forum non conveniens, based on its erroneous belief that Depp’s claims arose in Virginia since the Washington Post’s servers are situated here, according to the court filing supplied by Amber Heard’s attorneys. The trial court made a mistake when it rejected Heard’s demurrer, in which she claimed that the remarks under scrutiny are unactionable expressions of opinion and are not capable of conveying the alleged defamatory implication.
It also added, “That holding, if allowed to stand, undoubtedly will have a chilling effect on other women who wish to speak about abuse involving powerful men.”
In a 2018 Washington Post piece, where she identified herself as a victim of domestic abuse, Johnny Depp has been sued by Amber Heard for defamation. Depp asserted that even though his name was omitted from the article, it implied that he was the abuser and that this caused his career and reputation to be devastated.
The defamation trial was successfully concluded in favour of the former in May. He had received $5 million in punitive damages, which were reduced to the statutory maximum of $350,000 in Virginia, and $10 million in compensatory damages. Amber Heard also scored a modest victory when the judges gave her $2 million for a defamation countersuit. Depp’s attorneys filed an appeal against Heard’s lone victory in the case earlier in November.
