Johnny Depp’s defamation trial against his ex-wife Amber Heard has finally come to an end, with the jury’s final verdict, and the actor has been declared the winner of the trial by the jury.
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Heard will have to pay a total of $15 million to Depp ($10 million in damages and $5 million in punitive damages), although in the end it will only be $10.35 million, while Depp will also have to pay his ex-wife the amount of $2 million.
The jury of five men and two women returned its verdict on Wednesday after nearly 13 hours of deliberation spread over three days at the district court in Fairfax, Virginia.
Heard did defame Depp in his three lawsuits
The jury found that Depp was defamed by Heard in the title of his Washington Post op-ed, which read, “I spoke up against sexual violence — and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change.”
The jury also found that Depp was again defamed in his second claim against Amber Heard in the title of her Washington Post op-ed, which read: “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.”
By the third claim, the jury found that Heard defamed Johnny Depp in her Washington Post op-ed when she wrote: “I had the rare vantage point of seeing, in real time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse.”
Depp to pay Heard $2 million
On the other hand, the jury ruled that Adam Waldman did defame Heard when he told the Daily Mail she set up Depp in a hoax when the police came to their apartment in May 2016. It awarded Heard $2 million in damages for this claim.
However, Depp did not defame Amber Heard when his lawyer spoke of a “Ms. Heard abuse hoax against Johnny Depp,” the jury ruled. This means Depp was only found to be defamatory in one of her three claims.
According to the jury’s decision on awarding Depp $5 million in punitive damages, that number was capped at $350,000, according to state laws.
Subtracting Heard’s award from Depp’s total, the Pirates of the Caribbean star leaves the case with $8.35 million.
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