Depp’s legal team officially filed an appeal of Amber’s counterclaim win

• Amber Heard’s counterclaim victory was officially appealed by Johnny Depp’s legal team on the grounds that the decision was “erroneous” and needed to be overturned.
• In a 2018 op-ed against domestic abuse, Heard, 36, was judged to have defamed ex-husband Depp, 59, even though she didn’t specifically mention him.
• Heard changed her legal counsel for the appeal, a representative for the actress revealed in August.

Amber Heard’s counterclaim victory was officially appealed by Johnny Depp’s legal team on the grounds that the decision was “erroneous” and needed to be overturned.

In a 2018 op-ed against domestic abuse, Heard, 36, was judged to have defamed ex-husband Depp, 59, even though she didn’t specifically mention him. This was determined by a seven-person jury back on June 1. He was granted more than $10 million in damages after winning all three of his slander claims. Heard received a $2 million damage award when one of her three countersuit claims was successful. Depp’s team declared they will appeal her victory as she filed to appeal the verdict.

His team submitted a document to the Virginia Court of Appeals arguing that Depp shouldn’t be held accountable for remarks made by his lawyer.

The disputed remark was made by Depp’s attorney Adam Waldman to the Daily Mail on April 27, 2020, in which he claimed Heard and her associates set up Depp by reporting assault allegations to the police in 2016. The jury concluded that Waldman was representing Depp when he made the remark.

Despite an “emphatic favorable verdict” for Depp, the legal team, led by Benjamin Chew, writes in court documents that “the trial court was confronted with a number of novel and complex legal and factual issues,” and while most of those issues were wisely and correctly resolved by the trial court, some rulings were incorrect.

The filings also say, “At trial, Ms. Heard did not offer any proof that Mr. Depp had directly directed or made any of the three Waldman Statements. In fact, Mr. Depp stated in court that, previous to the counterclaim’s filing in August 2020, he had never even seen the Waldman Statements.”

No proof of Mr. Waldman’s actual malice was shown at trial, according to Heard’s legal team, while Depp’s team asserted that “Mr. Waldman is an independent contractor, whose purportedly tortious conduct is not automatically attributable to Mr. Depp.”

They added, “This Court should affirm the verdict in favor of Mr. Depp, but should overturn the judgment on Ms. Heard’s Counterclaim as to the April 27 Waldman Statement.”

A new request for comment was not answered by Heard’s representatives.

Heard changed her legal counsel for the appeal, a representative for the actress revealed in August. Ben Rottenborn replaced Elaine Charlson Bredehoft as co-counsel, and she hired Ballard Spahr’s David L. Axelrod and Jay Ward Brown to take the lead.

“In order to defend the fundamental right to free speech, we do not view the jury’s verdict as “the beginning of the end, but just the end of the beginning,” to paraphrase a well-known saying. Different representation is required for a different court, especially in light of the abundance of recent new evidence “In a statement at the time, her rep said.

Heard’s plea for a mistrial was denied by Judge Penney Azcarate in July, and after Heard formally appealed the decision, Depp’s legal team said that they would also be doing the same.

A representative for Heard stated in July that the company “believes the court committed errors that prohibited a just and fair verdict compatible with the First Amendment” and that the appeal will proceed.

“We are therefore appealing the verdict,” they added at the time. “While we realize today’s filing will ignite the Twitter bonfires, there are steps we need to take to ensure both fairness and justice.”

A Depp spokesman subsequently released the following statement in response to the development: “The jury deliberated for six weeks, heard the substantial evidence, and reached a unanimous decision that the defendant had repeatedly slandered Mr. Depp. We continue to believe that our argument is strong and that this judgment will stand.”

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