By Mrinalini Nayak
After a long trial that ended up being a media circus and twisted the Internet in many ways, actor Johnny Depp won the defamation lawsuit he filed accusing his ex-wife Amber Heard for her 2018 Op-ed in the Washington Post where she called herself a victim of domestic abuse.
What Is The Verdict In The Johnny Depp-Amber Heard Case?
The jury came out with a verdict on June 1, 2022, 3pm Eastern Time.
A Virginia jury of seven members found that Heard defamed Depp on three counts but that she was defamed only once by Depp's lawyer Adam Waldman.
After four days of deliberations, the jury gave a verdict in Depp's favour and awarded him $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages, reduced to $350,000 by the overseeing judge. The jury also awarded Heard $2 million for being defamed by the lawyer and zero punitive damages.
Overall Heard lost the counter-case and is liable to pay almost $8 million in damages to her ex-husband.
What Was The Case?
Depp and his ex-wife Heard had been fighting a defamation case against each other in Virginia's Fairfax County court. But this only started after Heard wrote an Op-ed for Washington Post, recounting her experiences as a survivor of domestic abuse. She did not name the aggressor in the article.
Soon after, Depp filed a defamation suit against Heard for $50 million, with his lawyers arguing that the article referred to their client and the allegations damaged his reputation and career. Amber filed a countersuit for $100 million, saying Depp defamed her by calling her suit false.
The Cut details the entire series of events leading up to the defamation case.
Depp's suit was centered on three statements within the article that Heard had written.
I. "I Spoke up against sexual violence – and faced our culture's wrath. That has to change."
II. 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"
III. "I had the rare vantage point of seeing, in real time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse."
Depp's team had to prove that these statements were defamatory towards him during the trial.
The trial went on for several weeks and was turned into multiple memes and video edits by social media users. The hashtags, social media posts were rooted in misogyny, painting Heard as an abuser while dismissing the many instances of domestic violence by Depp. Depp's fans turned him into a hero on the Internet and said #AmberHeardIsALiar.
READ | In Johnny Depp Vs Amber Heard Fight, Misogyny Is Winning Social Media
The Case Before
This case is something like a do-over. In 2018, Depp sued the executive editor and publisher of the British tabloidThe Sun for libel after it referred to him as a "wife beater" in an article.
When Depp's suit against the Sun went to trial in London in 2020, the burden was on the Sun to show that its statement about Depp was correct. The jury said there were 14 instances during which Depp had abused Amber Heard. The judge accepted that "Mr. Depp put her in fear of her life," and soon after Depp announced that he had been asked to resign from the Fantastic Beasts franchise.
Because Depp sued the Sun, however, and not Heard, that verdict wasn't grounds to dismiss Depp's suit against Heard.
While Heard accused Depp of abuse, Depp maintained that Heard was the 'aggressor' and often started spats, which at times led to 'physical altercations'.
"It could begin with a slap. It could begin with a shove. It could begin with throwing a TV remote at my head, throwing a glass of wine in my face. It's hard to explain, but the argument would start here, but it would roll around and become this circular thing of its own," NBC quoted Depp as saying.
How Did Johnny Depp And Amber Heard React To The Verdict?
Amber Heard took to social media platforms to post a statement after the jury's verdict. She said the verdict "sets back the clock to a time when a woman who spoke up and spoke out (against her abuser) could be publicly shamed and humiliated."
Johnny Depp released a statement of victory. "From the very beginning the goal of bringing this case was to reveal the truth, regardless of the outcome," he wrote. "The best is yet to come and a new chapter has finally begun".
How Did The Internet React To The Verdict?
The reaction of the Internet is not surprising at all.
If you have not been living under a rock, you know what the public sentiment have been around the Heard-Depp trial.
Social media users, or rather the Johnny Depp fans are rejoicing the verdict by trending a few hashtags— #JohnnyDeppIsInnocent #JusticeForJohnnyDepp and #MenToo are some of them.
Meanwhile, the hashtags also are bringing out misogynistic posts and tweets from people who believed that the #MeToo movement was taken too far. The people who feared and hated the #MeToo movement are now on the Internet with a vengeance.
One of the hashtags that is trending is #AmberHeardIsAPsychopath, with memes and posts that pretend to be funny but in effect mock women and mental health issues.
The hashtag#MePoo mocking the #MeToo movement and Johnny Depp's court anecdote around Heard allegedly defecating in his bed, is trending on both Twitter and Instagram.
Heard has lost the defamation trial. What it essentially means is that she has no right to talk about being a victim of domestic violence in the public space. Her op-ed may have tried to shine a light on the systemic oppression and silencing of abuse victims in the film industry/Hollywood, but she lost the public trial as the jurors found Depp's arguments more compelling.
But does that mean she was not abused? No.
Her loss in court does not make her the abuser in the relationship nor does it make Johnny Depp the victim of domestic abuse.
Highlights From The Trial
During the trial, Heard has described more than a dozen specific instances when she says Depp abused her, including her allegation that he sexually assaulted her with a liquor bottle in an alcohol-fueled rage. Depp has denied any physical or sexual abuse, and says Heard concocted the claims to destroy his reputation. He's also claimed that she physically attacked him on multiple occasions.
Writing to actor Paul Bettany in 2013, Depp had said, "Let's drown her before we burn her ."
In one of her testimonies, Heard said that Depp had "broken her nose and ripped out chunks of her hair" during another act of physical abuse. Heard's attorney had also shown photographs of the injuries on the actress inflicted by Depp.
During her first day on the stand in court, Heard had said, "Johnny on speed was different to Johnny on opiates, Johnny on opiates was different to Adderall and cocaine Johnny." Further during her trials, she had claimed that Depp used to "hallucinate after being sober".
The Guardian has a piece that calls the Amber Heard-Johnny Depp trial "an orgy of misogyny". "This is basically the end of MeToo," Dr. Jessica Taylor, a psychologist, forensic psychology Ph.D., and author of two books on misogyny and abuse told Rolling Stone.
