After a six-week, very public defamation trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, the jury greatly sided with the Pirates of the Caribbean actor at its conclusion. In the Depp v. Heard verdict, Heard was found guilty on three counts of defamation and owed her ex $15 million, but Depp was also found guilty on one count of Heard’s countersuit, owing her $2 million in damages. The latest development regarding this case is an appeal made by Depp regarding what he owes Heard.
On Wednesday, Johnny Depp filed a 44-page appellate brief with his lawyers suggesting that he should not be held liable for paying the $2 million decided upon by the court in June. The documents call Heard’s countersuit “fatally flawed” along with suggesting the court “should have granted Mr. Depp’s motion for summary judgment,” per Law & Crime. The brief also included three reasons as to why, starting with these words:
First, Mr. Depp cannot be held liable for Mr. Waldman’s statements as a matter of law. Ms. Heard sought to hold Mr. Depp liable for the April 27 Waldman Statement on a pure theory of vicarious liability, contending that Mr. Depp was liable merely because Mr. Waldman had been retained by Mr. Depp as his attorney and was therefore his agent. But as a matter of law, Mr. Waldman is an independent contractor, whose allegedly tortious conduct is not automatically attributable to Mr. Depp. Indeed, a wealth of authorities supports limiting a client’s liability for allegedly tortious conduct by an attorney, and the Court should impose that same limit here.
Depp’s lawyers argue that the actor should not have been legally be held liable for one of his lawyers, Adam Waldman, for claims of defaming Amber Heard in three statements to The Daily Mail. In Heard’s defamation countersuit, the jury ruled in favor of Heard for one of three statements, leading to one count of damages summing up to $2 million. Here’s the next reason per Depp’s latest document:
Second, because Ms. Heard proceeded against Mr. Depp at trial on a purely vicarious theory of liability, she was required to present evidence that Mr. Waldman committed each element of the tort of defamation, including that he acted with actual malice. No evidence of Mr. Waldman’s actual malice was presented at trial, so the judgment against Mr. Depp cannot be sustained.
The claim believes that Waldman’s statement was “solely” the subject of Heard’s defamation suit and thus believe that the court’s “judgment in Ms. Heard’s favor on that lone statement is erroneous.” Here’s the final reason:
Third, the April 27 Waldman Statement, viewed in context, is a non-actionable statement of opinion insufficient to support a claim for defamation.
Elsewhere on the lengthy document, pages of arguments expand on the points outlined as the above three reasons. If you’re interested in checking out the full document, check out Depp’s full Brief of Appeals. Depp is seeking full victory from his ex wife with this move following Heard seeking her own appeal from the verdict. Amber Heard is currently attempting to get her own ruling thrown out on the grounds that both sides won aspects of the case, making it “inherently and irreconcilably inconsistent.”
More to come…
