Amber Read defamed Johnny Depp in her 2018 Washington Publish op-ed, a Virginia jury established Wednesday afternoon.
The seven-person jury made the decision to award the “Edward Scissorhands” star a full of $15 million in damages following deliberating for about 13 hours.
The jury awarded Depp $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages. On the other hand, Virginia regulation caps punitive damages at $350,000. This suggests Depp will receive a highest of $10.35 million soon after he pays an admittedly “shamed and humiliated” Read the $2 million in compensatory defamation damages she was awarded.
The jury declared Read “acted with actual malice” when she penned her now-notorious op-ed, titled “I spoke up versus sexual violence — and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to transform.”
Listened to at first submitted for divorce from Depp in May well 2016, and accused him of domestic violence times later on when she requested a momentary restraining buy.
The star did not pen her WaPo piece — in her job as “ambassador on women’s rights at the American Civil Liberties Union” — until finally December 2018, far more than two-and-a-50 percent a long time later on.
In the op-ed, Read, 36, claimed that she was a sufferer of abuse — but did not explicitly identify Depp, 58, as a perpetrator.
As an alternative, she wrote that more than the previous “two years” she experienced turn into a “public figure representing domestic abuse” and that she feared remaining “blacklisted” in Hollywood.
“I had the scarce vantage point of looking at, in serious time, how institutions safeguard adult men accused of abuse,” Read wrote, introducing that she felt “on demo in the court docket of general public view.”
Depp’s attorneys asserted that Listened to was clearly implicating him as an abuser in the op-ed and claimed that it significantly weakened his track record and price tag him lucrative motion picture roles — including a $22.5 million offer to star in a sixth “Pirates of the Caribbean” film.
Throughout the demo, even so, Read vigorously managed that her piece was not about her ex-partner, indicating on the stand: “It’s not about Johnny. The only one particular who assumed it was about Johnny is Johnny.”
She further insisted: “It’s about me. It’s about what took place to me soon after Johnny. It’s about what occurred to me right after I escaped my relationship. It’s about me and my everyday living and what I endured the moment I moved on and acquired a TRO [temporary restraining order] and moved on with my life. It was about what happened to me just after.”
The jury disagreed.
Even though the jury identified Depp was defamed, the $15 million they chose to award him fell considerably quick of the $50 million in damages that he was trying to get.
Continue to, Depp launched a assertion to The Post saying he felt victorious and has lengthy claimed that he had never been abusive towards Listened to. In its place, he claimed that she was the abuser in their turbulent partnership.
“The jury gave me my daily life back again,” Depp triumphantly declared. “Six years ago [in 2016, when Heard first accused him of abuse], my lifestyle, the lifestyle of my young children, the life of all those closest to me, and also, the life of the persons who for a lot of, lots of many years have supported and considered in me were being without end altered,” he claimed.
“False, quite serious and prison allegations were levied at me via the media, which activated an countless barrage of hateful information, despite the fact that no expenses were at any time introduced versus me,” he extra. “It experienced previously traveled close to the environment two times in just a nanosecond and it had a seismic effects on my life and my job.
“From the really starting, the target of bringing this situation was to reveal the truth of the matter, regardless of the outcome,” the “Sleepy Hollow” star further more declared. “Speaking the reality was some thing that I owed to my kids and to all all those who have remained steadfast in their help of me. I experience at peace being aware of I have lastly accomplished that.”
In the meantime, Listened to appeared visibly devastated as she sat in the courtroom and listened to the jury’s verdict.
“The disappointment I sense today is further than text. I’m heartbroken that the mountain of evidence however was not adequate to stand up to the disproportionate electric power, impact, and sway of my ex-partner,” Heard explained in a statement acquired by The Post just after the verdict. “I’m unhappy I missing this scenario. But I am sadder continue to that I look to have shed a ideal I assumed I had as an American — to discuss freely and openly.”
Depp summed up the verdict differently: “And 6 a long time later, the jury gave me my existence back. I am actually humbled.”
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