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After losing a defamation case that involved his ex-wife Amber Heard, Hollywood actor Johnny Depp filed for another defamation trial in Virginia, US, that launched on Monday.
Depp is suing Heard, also an actor, for libel in a $50-million defamation lawsuit that was filed in March 2019 over an opinion article Heard wrote for The Washington Post in 2018, in which she describes her experience of speaking out against sexual violence. She also touched upon the lessons she learned from the #MeToo movement. In the article, Heard did not name Depp and did not mention specific details of their married life.
But she said, “Like many women, I had been harassed and sexually assaulted by the time I was of college age. But I kept quiet — I did not expect filing complaints to bring justice. And I didn’t see myself as a victim.”
“Then two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out,” she wrote.
In July 2020, Depp launched a separate legal action against the publisher of the British tabloid The Sun and its executive editor Dan Wootton at the High Court in London, over a 2018 article in which Wootton called Depp a “wife-beater”.
The article titled, “Gone Potty – How can JK Rowling be ‘genuinely happy’ casting wife beater Johnny Depp in the new Fantastic Beasts film?”, was written after JK Rowling supported the casting of Depp in the lead role of Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.
Depp lost the case in November 2020. The judge concluded that the article published in the tabloid was “substantially true”. Depp was also not allowed to appeal against the judge’s decision.
What are the allegations against Depp?
Depp and Heard were married for a period of 15 months starting 2015. Heard filed for divorce in 2016 and claimed that Depp has assaulted her.
Depp has denied all the accusations, maintaining that he never hit her. In one of the bizarre counter accusations, Depp said that Heard left human feces on their bed in their Los Angeles home.
Heard also submitted evidence to the court in support of The Sun’s article.
In one of the incidents, Heard describes a “three-day hostage situation” while Depp was shooting for his film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales‘ in Australia, during which time she claimed that Depp choked her and pushed her to the ground after she found a bag of MDMA pills.
Depp has denied all these claims and maintains that during this incident, he injured his finger when Heard threw two vodka bottles at him after she learnt that he was planning on a post-nuptial agreement. Heard, on the other hand, claims that he severed his finger while smashing a telephone against the wall.
In 2016, a Los Angeles court granted a temporary restraining order to Heard just days after she filed for divorce citing irreconcilable differences. She accused Depp of hitting her in their Los Angeles apartment in May 2016 while the police said they found no evidence of a crime.
However, days before the hearing for the restraining order, Heard withdrew the abuse allegations against Depp and reached a $7-million divorce settlement. In a joint statement issued by Depp and Heard at the time, they acknowledged that their relationship was “volatile” and that neither of them had intended the other any physical or emotional harm. Heard also mentioned in the statement that she would donate the proceeds from the divorce to a charity.
How has this affected Depp’s career?
Following the defeat in the London case in November 2020, Depp announced that he was letting go of his role in the third installment of JK Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts franchise.
In a post on Instagram, Depp wrote, “I have been asked to resign by Warner Bros. from my role as Grindelwald in Fantastic Beasts and I have respected and agreed to that request”. “My life and career will not be defined by this moment.”
A report in The Guardian notes that after the London court case, “Depp’s image lost its shine with tales of off-screen excess before his star power was all-but extinguished.”
Even so, at the time of the trial, Depp remained the face of one of luxury brand Dior’s fragrances and was criticised for doing so.
What are Depp and his lawyers saying?
Depp has denied hitting Heard and has also rejected Heard’s allegations about him being abusive to her, calling them “sick”. During the London libel trial, Depp told the court that the newspaper’s claims calling him a “wife-beater” were “completely untrue”.
In fact, Depp has accused Heard of “building a dossier” against him. Depp’s former partners, actress Winona Ryder and singer Vanessa Paradis, also provided statements supporting him. In her statement, Ryder wrote, “I knew Johnny very well years ago. We were together as a couple for four years, and I counted him as my best friend, and as close to me as family. I count our relationship as one of the more significant relationships of my life.”
In Depp’s own declaration, he maintains that his ex-wife fabricated the domestic violence allegations and that she arrived in court in May 2016 with “painted-on bruises that witnesses and surveillance footage show she did not possess each day of the preceding week”, as per a report in The Washington Post. Depp has also accused Heard of abusing him throughout the relationship.
According to The Guardian, in the current trial that is expected to go on for six weeks, Depp’s lawyers will have to reach a higher burden of proof to win. This means that they will have to show that Heard defamed Depp but also did so with malice.
His “lawyers claim that Heard orchestrated an elaborate hoax in order to cripple Depp’s career, an allegation that led her to file a $100m counter-claim. They plan to introduce witness testimony and review texts and photographs…” The Guardian reported.
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