John C. Depp, II v. Amber Laura Heard was a trial held in Fairfax County, Virginia, from April 11 to June 1, 2022, that ruled on allegations of defamation between formerly married American actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. Depp, as plaintiff, filed a complaint of defamation against defendant Heard claiming $50 million in damages; Heard filed counterclaims against Depp claiming $100 million in damages. Depp won the trial and was awarded $10,350,000; Heard succeeded on one of her counterclaims, and was awarded $2 million.
Depp and Heard first met in 2009 and got married in February 2015. Heard filed for divorce in May 2016, claiming that Depp had abused her physically, which he denied. The couple's divorce was finalized in January 2017. In the High Court of Justice in London, Depp sued News Group Newspapers Ltd for libel over an article published in The Sun that claimed he had assaulted Heard. In November 2020, the presiding judge ruled against Depp, stating, "[T]he great majority of alleged assaults of Ms. Heard by Mr. Depp have been proved to the civil standard." Several legal experts suggested that Depp had a smaller chance of winning in the American trial compared to the British trial.
In the Virginia trial, Depp's claims related to a December 2018 op-ed by Heard, published in The Washington Post. Depp claimed Heard caused new damage to his reputation and career by stating that she had spoken up against "sexual violence" and "faced our culture's wrath"; that "two years ago, [she] became a public figure representing domestic abuse" and "felt the full force of our culture's wrath for women who speak out"; and that she "had the rare vantage point of seeing, in real time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse". Heard's counterclaims included allegations that Adam Waldman, Depp's former lawyer, had defamed her in statements published in the Daily Mail in 2020. Throughout the trial, Depp's legal team sought to disprove Heard's domestic abuse allegations and to demonstrate that she had been the instigator, rather than the victim, of intimate partner violence. Heard's lawyers defended the op-ed, claiming it to be factual and protected by the First Amendment.
The jury found that Heard's op-ed references to "sexual violence" and "domestic abuse" were false and defamed Depp with actual malice. It awarded Depp $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages from Heard, although the court reduced the punitive damages to $350,000 due to a limit imposed by Virginia state law. It also found that Depp had defamed Heard through Waldman, who had falsely alleged that Heard and her friends "roughed up" Depp's penthouse as part of an "ambush, a hoax". It awarded Heard $2 million in compensatory damages and $0 in punitive damages from Depp. Separately, the jury found that Waldman's other allegations of Heard's "sexual violence hoax" and "abuse hoax" against Depp had not been proven defamatory.
Depp's victory in Virginia was attributed by some to the fact that he got a jury trial, which may be why he and his legal team sought to have the trial in Virginia to begin with. After the trial ended, Heard put forth motions to set aside the verdict, but was unsuccessful. Then, both Depp and Heard appealed against the respective verdicts. In December 2022, both parties reached a settlement and dropped their appeals, with Depp's lawyers Benjamin Chew and Camille Vasquez stating that Depp would receive $1 million from Heard.
The livestreamed trial attracted large numbers of viewers and considerable social media response, most of which was sympathetic to Depp and critical of Heard. The trial renewed debates around topics relating to domestic violence, domestic violence against men, the #MeToo movement, and women's rights, although some commentators were skeptical of the trial's long-term implications.
Background
Depp and Heard's relationship
The two actors met in 2009 while filming The Rum Diary; according to Heard, their relationship began "around the end of 2011 or early 2012". They were engaged in January 2014, and, in February 2015, they married on Depp's private island in The Bahamas, Little Hall's Pond Cay. Heard filed for divorce on May 23, 2016, and obtained a temporary restraining order against Depp. She also requested $50,000 a month in spousal support, which was denied. In response, Depp alleged that she was "attempting to secure a premature financial resolution by alleging abuse". Heard testified about the alleged abuse in a deposition during their divorce litigation, alleging that Depp had been "verbally and physically abusive" throughout their relationship, usually while under the influence of alcohol or drugs. In light of the publicity, images of Heard's alleged injuries were published by the media.
A settlement was reached in August 2016, and the divorce was finalized in January 2017. Heard withdrew the restraining order, and she and Depp released a joint statement stating that their relationship was "intensely passionate and periodically volatile, but always bound by love. Neither party has made false accusations for financial gain. There was never any intent of physical or emotional harm."
Depp paid Heard a divorce settlement of $7 million, which she pledged to donate to the American Civil Liberties Union and the Children's Hospital Los Angeles. The settlement included a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) preventing either party from discussing their relationship publicly. As of April 2022, Heard had paid less than half of what she promised to the ACLU from her divorce settlement over five years prior. Much of what she had paid to that point was thought by the ACLU to have actually come from Elon Musk and Depp himself instead of Heard.
Depp v News Group Newspapers Ltd
In April 2018, British tabloid The Sun published an article with an online title that described Depp as a "wife beater", and, in June 2018, Depp sued News Group Newspapers, the publisher of The Sun, and then executive editor Dan Wootton for libel. Both Depp and Heard testified in the July 2020 trial, which focused on evaluating 14 alleged incidents of abuse. In November 2020, Judge Andrew Nicol ruled in favor of the publisher, finding that the great majority of Depp's alleged assaults had been proven to a civil standard and, therefore, the paper's characterization of Depp was "substantially true". The verdict found that Depp had assaulted Heard in 12 of the 14 alleged incidents and put her in fear of her life. Judge Nicol rejected Depp's contention that Heard was a "gold-digger", saying in his ruling: "Her donation of the seven million US dollars to charity is hardly the act one would expect of a gold-digger." Heard later claimed in the 2022 Virginia trial that she was scheduled to pay the entire pledged donation within 10 years and that she was behind her payment schedule because of Depp's suits against her.
After the verdict, Depp resigned from the Fantastic Beasts film series at the request of Warner Bros., the film's production company. In March 2021, the Court of Appeal rejected Depp's request to appeal the verdict, concluding that the appeal had "no real prospect of success". Lawyers for Depp had argued that he had not received a fair hearing, that Heard was an unreliable witness and that recently discovered evidence contradicts Heard's assertion about her donation of the divorce settlement sum, arguing that the Judge in deciding the case, gave great weight to Heard's testimony that she donated all her $7 million divorce settlement to charity. But the appeals judges concluded he had a "full and fair" trial, and that "the judge based his conclusions on each of the incidents on his extremely detailed review of the evidence specific to each incident [...] in an approach of that kind there was little need or room for the judge to give weight to any general assessment of Ms. Heard's credibility."
Heard's op-ed in The Washington Post
In December 2018, The Washington Post published an op-ed written by Heard and titled "Amber Heard: I spoke up against sexual violence—and faced our culture's wrath. That has to change." In the article, Heard stated: "Then two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture's wrath for women who speak out. [...] I had the rare vantage point of seeing, in real time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse." She further stated that, as a result of this, she had lost a film role and an advertising campaign for a global fashion brand. The op-ed called for Congress to re-authorize the Violence Against Women Act and did not explicitly mention Depp by name.
Matters from Heard's counterclaims pursued through the trial related to three statements made by Depp's lawyer, Adam Waldman, and published by the Daily Mail in April and June 2020.
First, Waldman stated that "Amber Heard and her friends in the media used fake sexual violence allegations as both sword and shield, depending on their needs. They have selected some of her sexual violence hoax 'facts' as the sword, inflicting them on the public and Mr. Depp."
Waldman's second statement regarded a 2016 incident in Depp and Heard's Hollywood penthouse: "Quite simply this was an ambush, a hoax. They set Mr. Depp up by calling the cops but the first attempt didn't do the trick. The officers came to the penthouses, thoroughly searched and interviewed, and left after seeing no damage to face or property. So, Amber and her friends spilled a little wine and roughed the place up, got their stories straight under the direction of a lawyer and publicist, and then placed a second call to 911."
Third, Waldman stated: "We have reached the beginning of the end of Ms. Heard's abuse hoax against Johnny Depp."
Civil action
In February 2019, Depp sued Heard over her December 2018 op-ed in The Washington Post. Depp claimed that Heard's allegations were part of an elaborate hoax against him and repeated his allegation that Heard had been the one who violently abused him. In August 2020, Heard countersued Depp over the three statements made by his attorney Adam Waldman. The trial was held at the Fairfax County Circuit Court. The location was chosen on the basis that the online edition and the print edition of The Washington Post' op-ed are published in the county.
Pre-trial developments
In June 2020, several lawyers withdrew from Heard's legal team with her endorsement, including Time's Up founder, Roberta Kaplan. In October 2020, the judge ruling on early pre-trial motions revoked permission for lawyer Adam Waldman to represent Depp in Virginia after Waldman leaked confidential information covered by a protective order to the media.
In August 2021, a New York judge ruled that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) had to disclose documents related to Heard's charity pledge to the organization for which the ACLU would later demand payment. Also in August 2021, Judge Penney S. Azcarate overruled a plea filed by Heard's lawyers for having the defamation suit dismissed on the basis of the verdict in Depp's lawsuit against the publishers of The Sun, with Azcarate citing that: Heard had been a witness in the UK case (as opposed to a defendant), the facts alleged were different (Heard's allegedly defamatory statements were made after the English case commenced), and the parties had not been subject to the same discovery procedures as in the United States.
In February 2022, over objections from Heard, Azcarate ordered to permit the broadcast of courtroom proceedings. Depp's lawyer Benjamin Chew welcomed the cameras and stated that "Mr. Depp believes in transparency." Judge Azcarate, who worried that reporters might otherwise have come to the courthouse and potentially create hazardous conditions, said, "I don't see any good cause not to do it."
Trial
On April 11, 2022, the trial began in Fairfax County, Virginia, with a day to finalize jury selection. The trial ended in June 2022.
Opening statements
Opening statements were made on April 12, 2022. Lawyers representing Depp accused Heard of fabricating domestic abuse accusations against Depp to further her career, saying that Heard made such allegations because Depp had asked for a divorce, and they further accused Heard of being the actual abuser in the relationship. They argued that, while Heard's 2018 op-ed did not mention Depp, it was clear by implication that it referred to him, and that Heard's writing in the piece ("Then two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse") was a reference to her May 2016 restraining order request, in which she alleged that Depp had physically abused her. Depp's lawyers discussed Heard appearing in public with a bruised face on May 27, 2016, accusing her of staging the injury, citing that Depp had not met her since May 21, 2016, and that his witnesses had seen her without the injury in the days between May 21, 2016, and May 27, 2016. They also discussed several instances in which Depp alleges Heard instigated physical violence against him.
Heard's lawyers claimed that Depp had physically and sexually abused Heard on multiple occasions throughout their relationship, usually triggered by his addiction to both alcohol and drugs. They accused Depp of seeking to "humiliate [Heard], haunt her, wreck her career" with the Virginia lawsuit and to turn the case into a "soap opera". They further argued that the First Amendment protected Heard's right to express her views in the op-ed, which was mostly focused on a broad discussion of domestic violence and did not explicitly mention Depp's name. Finally, Heard's lawyers stated that the allegations had not changed Depp's reputation, as they had become public knowledge two years prior to the op-ed, and that Depp had instead ruined his Hollywood career himself with his drinking and drug use; this made him "unreliable" in the eyes of major film studios.
Testimony
Witness lists were submitted by both parties, prior to trial.
Witness testimony began on April 12, following the parties' presentation of their opening statements, and ended on May 26.
Closing arguments
Following the judge's reading of the trial's jury instructions on May 27, 2022, Depp's and Heard's legal teams presented their closing arguments.
Depp's legal team maintained that Heard was the abuser in their relationship and that Heard's allegations against Depp were untrue and had ruined his life. They asked the jurors to "give him his life back". "You either believe all of it or none of it. Either Mr. Depp assaulted Ms. Heard with a bottle in Australia, or Ms. Heard got up on that stand, in front of all of you, and made up that horrific tale of abuse," lawyer Camille Vasquez told the jury. "An act of profound cruelty not just to Mr. Depp but to true survivors of domestic abuse." Vasquez told the court that Heard "came into this courtroom ready to give the performance of her lifetime [...] and she gave it." Vasquez also argued that Heard "burns bridges" and "her close friends don't show up for her," because, according to Vasquez, apart from Heard's sister, every person who personally testified on behalf of Heard was a "paid expert", whereas many witnesses personally testified for Depp in court.