Johnny Depp, Amber Heard settle high-profile defamation lawsuits | 24CA News

Actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard have settled their defamation lawsuits following a high-profile trial earlier this yr during which the previous couple accused one another of bodily and verbal abuse.

Heard introduced the settlement Monday on social media. Both sides had filed appeals of assorted points of the jury’s verdicts in June. The seven-person civil jury had awarded Depp $10 million US in damages, but additionally awarded $2 million to Heard.

Depp’s camp mentioned the deal features a $1-million cost from her to him to settle all monetary claims.

Depp’s legal professionals mentioned he’ll donate that cash to charity.

“We are pleased to formally close the door on this painful chapter for Mr. Depp, who made clear throughout this process that his priority was about bringing the truth to light. The jury’s unanimous decision and the resulting judgment in Mr. Depp’s favour against Ms. Heard remain fully in place,” Depp’s legal professionals, Benjamin Chew and Camille Vazquez, mentioned.

Both sides argued to a jury in Fairfax County Circuit Court that the opposite had defamed them. Depp mentioned he was libeled by Heard when she wrote a 2018 op-ed piece in The Washington Post describing herself as “a public figure representing domestic abuse.”

Depp’s legal professionals mentioned he was defamed by the article though it by no means talked about his title as a result of, they argued, it clearly referenced abuse allegations Heard had made towards Depp throughout divorce proceedings.

‘I by no means selected this,’ says Heard

Heard, alternatively, mentioned she was defamed by Depp when certainly one of his legal professionals known as her abuse allegations a “hoax.”

In a put up Monday on Instagram, Heard mentioned the choice to settle was troublesome.

“I never chose this,” she wrote. “I defended my truth and in doing so my life as I knew it was destroyed. The vilification I have faced on social media is an amplified version of the ways in which women are re-victimized when they come forward.”

The trial stretched over a number of months and have become one thing of a cultural phenomenon, as hundreds of thousands of Americans watched the televised proceedings.

Ostensibly a defamation case, the trial ceaselessly devolved into ugly mudslinging as each Depp and Heard took the stand over a number of days denying one another’s abuse allegations and accusing one another of horrible behaviour throughout their transient marriage.

At the courthouse and throughout the nation, Depp’s supporters backed him fervently, and Heard was routinely mocked as she detailed allegations of bodily, emotional and sexual abuse.

The ruling on the Virginia courtroom in Depp’s favour got here after a choose within the United Kingdom dominated towards Depp in a libel go well with he introduced there towards a British tabloid. The choose in that 2020 case concluded that Heard had certainly been topic to abuse at Depp’s palms on a number of events.