Amber Heard's attorneys have sent a 43-page filing to a Virginia court, seeking to appeal or throw out last month's verdict in the defamation lawsuit that pitted her against her ex-husband, Johnny Depp.
In the motion, filed on June 3, the Aquaman actress' team argued that the verdict was not supported by sufficient evidence, while one of the jurors had allegedly not been properly vetted.
Johnny Depp was awarded over $10 million in punitive and compensatory damages on June 1 after the seven-person jury in Fairfax, Va. unanimously ruled in the Hollywood actor’s favor in his defamation lawsuit against ex-wife Amber Heard.
The Pirates of the Caribbean actor sued his ex-wife over an article in The Washington Post in 2018, in which she alleged she was a "public figure representing domestic violence". Although Heard did not mention the 58-year-old star by name, Depp insisted that her article harmed his reputation and career, as he was dismissed from several films because of her claims. Depp has also maintained that he never laid a hand on Heard, while, instead, accusing her of physically harming him.
The Virginia court jury also ruled in Amber Heard's favor as to one of her claims in her countersuit, agreeing that she had been defamed in one instance by a lawyer for Depp, and awarding her $2 million.
At the time, the actress' attorney said that Heard would "absolutely" appeal the verdict, which she slammed as a "setback" for women.
In its memorandum, Amber Heard's legal team argued that it was incorrect for Johnny Depp, 59, to claim that he was dismissed from his role in the Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise because of the Washington Post op-ed.
Depp "proceeded solely on a defamation by implication theory, abandoning any claims that Ms. Heard's statements were actually false," stated the filing.
The motion also cast doubt on the validity of the jury selection process. According to it, an individual identified as Juror 15 had their birth year listed as 1945 in court records.
Juror 15 “was clearly born later than 1945. Publicly available information demonstrates that he appears to have been born in 1970,” the filing stated, adding:
“This discrepancy raises the question whether Juror 15 actually received a summons for jury duty and was properly vetted by the court to serve on the jury.”
In response to the filing by Amber Heard's team, Johnny Depp's attorney Benjamin Chew was cited by Courthouse News as dismissing the appeal as "what we expected, just longer, no more substantive."