A judge on Wednesday rejected a request from the actor Amber Heard to set aside the $10m defamation judgment awarded against her in favor of her ex-husband, Johnny Depp.
Depp won a suit against Heard last month in a high-profile civil trial. Heard won a $2m judgment on a counter-claim against Depp.
Earlier this month, Heard filed a motion seeking to have Depp’s verdict set aside, or have a mistrial declared. Her lawyers cited multiple factors, including an apparent case of mistaken identity with one of the jurors.
Heard’s lawyers challenged the verdict on the basis that one of the seven jurors who decided the case was never summoned for jury duty. According to court papers, a 77-year-old county resident received a jury summons but the man’s son, who has the same name and lives at the same address, responded and served in his stead.
Heard’s lawyers argued that Virginia law is strict about juror identities, and the case of mistaken identity is grounds for a mistrial. They presented no evidence that the 52-year-old son, identified in court papers only as Juror 15, purposefully or insidiously sought to replace his father, but argued that possibility should not be discounted.
“The court cannot assume, as Mr Depp asks it to, that Juror 15’s apparently improper service was an innocent mistake. It could have been an intentional attempt to serve on the jury of a high-profile case,” Heard’s lawyers wrote.
In a written order on Wednesday, Judge Penney Azcarate rejected all Heard’s claims and said the juror issue specifically was irrelevant and that Heard cannot show she was prejudiced.
“The juror was vetted, sat for the entire jury, deliberated, and reached a verdict,” Azcarate wrote. “The only evidence before this court is that this juror and all jurors followed their oaths, the court’s instructions, and orders. This court is bound by the competent decision of the jury.”
Heard still has the ability to appeal the verdict to the Virginia court of appeals.
Depp sued for $50m in Fairfax county after Heard wrote a 2018 op-ed in the Washington Post about domestic violence in which she referred to herself as “a public figure representing domestic abuse”.
The article did not mention Depp but his lawyers said several passages defamed him by implication by referring to highly publicized abuse allegations she made in 2016 as she filed for divorce.
Heard filed a $100m counterclaim, also for defamation. By the time the case went to trial her counterclaim had been whittled down to a few statements made by one of Depp’s lawyers, who called Heard’s abuse allegations a hoax.
The jury awarded $15m to Depp and $2m to Heard. The $15m judgment was reduced to $10.35m because Virginia law caps punitive damages at $350,000.
The judge did not spell out rationale for rejecting Heard’s other claims in Wednesday’s order.
Among other things, Heard argued that the $10m verdict is unsupported by the facts, and seems to demonstrate that jurors failed to focus on the fallout from the 2018 op-ed as they were supposed to and instead looked broadly at the damage Depp’s reputation suffered.
Heard’s lawyers also argued argue that the verdicts for Depp on one hand and Heard on the other are fundamentally nonsensical.
“The jury’s dueling verdicts are inconsistent and irreconcilable,” Elaine Bredehoft and Benjamin Rottenborn wrote.
Issues presented to the appellate court could be different from the issues Azacarate rejected on Wednesday.
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