Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s lawyers FAIL to make a last-minute settlement ordered to pay $10 million: Lawyers for Johnny Depp and Amber Heard have failed to strike a last-minute deal that may have seen the damages the actress owed to her former spouse be lowered, following their six-week defamation trial which finished earlier this month.
Instead, the judge in the trial made the jury’s award official on Friday with a written order for Heard to pay Depp $10.35 million for hurting his reputation by presenting herself as a domestic abuse victim in an op-ed piece she penned.
Following the conclusion of a speedy hearing in the Fairfax County Circuit Court, Judge Penney Azcarate filed a judgment order into the official court record, thus rendering the verdict final. Both Depp and Heard were noticeably absent from the event.
A jury found that Heard had been defamed by one of Depp’s attorneys, and the judge ordered that Depp pay Heard the $2 million that the jury had awarded her for that counterclaim.
After a sensational trial in which the couple revealed lurid details of their brief marriage during a televised trial that was closely followed on social media, the order was a formality after the jury announced its verdict on June 1. The jury largely sided with Depp after a trial in which the couple revealed lurid details of their short marriage.
The attorneys for Johnny Depp and Amber Heard were unable to reach a last-minute settlement, which means that there will likely be an appeals procedure that is both expensive and time-consuming.
The matter will be sent to the Court of Appeals of Virginia in three weeks, at which point both parties will have a period of thirty days to submit a notice of appeal to the higher court.
Heard was sued by Depp because of an opinion piece she published in December 2018 for The Washington Post in which she referred to herself as “a public figure symbolizing domestic abuse.”
The jury decided in favor of Depp on all three of his allegations, which were related to specific assertions made in the 2018 article, and found in his favor.
The jury determined that Depp should receive $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages; however, the court lowered the verdict for punitive damages to $350,000 in accordance with a state cap on such awards.
She is currently on the verge of filing for bankruptcy, but Heard has stated that she intends to challenge the judgment.
After a string of unfortunate events, a source close to the Aquaman actor claimed that the 36-year-old actress was ‘broke,’ that she ‘considers her career in Hollywood to be gone,’ and that she ‘had nothing to lose as a result of her predicament.
Through her attorney, Heard agreed that she does not have the financial capacity to pay the $8.3 million in damages that were granted to Depp.
Since then, the actress has been seen doing some thrifty shopping at the New York City location of the cheap store TJ Maxx.
If you are innocent, you do not submit a request for a pardon. In an interview with the New York Post on Friday, she stated, “And, you don’t decline to appeal if you know you are right.”
In the course of the hearing that took place on Friday, the judge stated that in the event that Heard decides to file an appeal, as is customary, she will be required to post a bond in the amount of the entire $10.35 million judgment while the appeal is pending.
Additionally, she would be responsible for making interest payments totaling an additional 480 thousand dollars.
According to the judgment issued by the judge, both awards are subject to interest at the rate of 6% per year.
According to the Post’s reporting, the judge wrote down Depp’s interpretation of the ruling and disregarded all of Heard’s suggested amendments to it.
In an interview that aired on Good Morning America earlier this month, Depp’s attorney Benjamin Chew mentioned that the actor could be prepared to give up the millions of dollars in damages that are entitled to him if it was agreed upon that Heard would not pursue an appeal against the judgment.
According to Chew, “We obviously can’t divulge attorney-client correspondence, but as Mr. Depp testified,… this was never about money for Mr. Depp.” It was important for him to repair his reputation, and he was successful in doing so.
