London, Europe Brief News – Johnny Depp won a defamation suit Wednesday against his former wife Amber Heard.
The jury found that she had defamed Depp in an article in which she claimed she was a victim of domestic abuse.
Jurors awarded Mr Depp – who denied abusing Ms Heard – $15m (£12m) in compensatory and punitive damages.
Ms Heard, 36, won one of three counter-claims against Mr Depp, 58, and was awarded $2m in compensatory damages.
However, Amber Heard’s lawyer has said her client can “absolutely not” pay Johnny Depp more than $10 million in compensation.
Elaine Charlson Bredehoft appeared on the TODAY programme on Thursday where she unloaded a series of gripes about the case to presenter Savannah Guthrie, calling the trial a “zoo” and complaining that the jury had been influenced by social media.
Bredehoft said Depp’s team had worked to “demonise” Heard and was able to suppress “an enormous amount of evidence” in the trial. Heard is now planning on appealing and her lawyer said she had some “excellent grounds for it”. Heard’s team spoke out amid suggestions that the actor was now unemployable.
“A number of things were allowed in this court that should not have been allowed, and it caused the jury to be confused,” Bredehoft explained.
The Pirates of the Caribbean star sued Heard for $50 million over an op-ed she wrote for The Washington Post in 2018, in which she identified as a “public figure representing domestic abuse.” Depp was not named, but argued that there was an implication he was the abuser.
The Hollywood stars, who divorced in 2017, presented conflicting versions of their doomed relationship in the trial.
