The actress will have to pay 15 million dollars to her ex-husband, while the actor will have to pay two to his ex-wife
At 9:00 p.m. the reading of the verdict by Judge Penny Azcárate began, which has been one of the most mediatic trials of recent times in the United States, the one that faced actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard for defamation. . Only she was present in the room to listen to him, dressed in black and with her head lowered.
As if it were a suspense movie, after ten minutes, the judge delayed the reading since part of a document from one of the jurors remained to be filled out. After another eternal ten minutes, at 9:20 p.m. the confirmation arrived: the jury considered that Amber Heard “committed defamation against her ex-husband Johnny Depp” in the column he wrote in 2018 in the Washington Post but also that Depp had defamed the interpreter of Aquaman. However, it was he who emerged victorious because while the protagonist of Pirates of the Caribbean won the three charges of defamation and obtained compensation of 15 million, Heard only managed to have one of the charges recognized, so the actor will have to pay her 2 million.
The verdict included the three phrases that denoted her defamatory intent in her article: “I spoke out against sexual violence and faced the wrath of our culture. That has to change.” “Then two years ago I became a public figure representing domestic abuse and felt the full force of our culture’s anger at women who speak out,” and “I had the benefit of seeing, in real time, how institutions protect women.” men accused of abuse.
Some statements that were the origin of the defamation lawsuit that entailed a request for 50 million dollars to which she responded with a counterclaim in which she doubled the economic demand. In the end, the ruling has been more benevolent, drastically reducing economic requests.
In the countersuit, she also presented three charges of which this sentence published in the Daily Mail in 2020 has been recognized as defamatory: «Simply, this was an ambush, a hoax. They set up Mr. Depp by calling the police, but the first attempt was unsuccessful. Agents went to the attics, searched and interviewed them thoroughly, and left after seeing no damage to the face or property. So Amber and her friends spilled some wine and messed up the site, cleared up her stories under the direction of a lawyer and a publicist, and then made a second 911 call.”
harsh accusations
After weeks of statements by the two artists, the seven members of the jury (five men and two women) met for the first time to deliberate last Friday and met again this Tuesday after spending the weekend and Monday festive. Despite the hardness of the testimonies that had been collected during the process, in which Amber Heard collapsed on several occasions when accusing the protagonist of ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ of rape, while Johnny Depp blamed her for having cut a bit of finger throwing a bottle at him, it was not a criminal trial. There were no reports of mistreatment, rape, assault or violence. What was settled was whether or not there was defamation by any of the protagonists and the amount of possible compensation.
The form that they had to fill out included the same questions for both of them, starting with whether they considered that the actor or actress had proven all the elements of defamation to continue with the argument on the matter. After those questions, it ended with two decisive boxes referring to the amount of compensation: compensatory and punitive damages.
Thus ends one of the most mediatic trials in the history of the United States that has caused viral reactions on social networks and queues of followers with people camped at the doors of the courts to be able to follow the process in person. So many people that the judge determined that one hundred bracelets would be distributed in order of arrival to allow access. An event in the purest Hollywood style full of tears, violence, curiosity and expectation.
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