Los Angeles California - The lawyer of Amber Heard said on Thursday that the actress cannot pay the more than $10 million that the jury has imposed as compensation for defaming Johnny Depp in an opinion column and who also plans to appeal the sentence.
“He has excellent reasons to do so, there is a lot of evidence that was not admitted,” said the lawyer, Elaine Bredehoftduring an interview on the NBC network’s “Today” morning show, one day after the verdict of the media trial was known.
Asked if Heard was capable of paying the more than $10 million in damages, the lawyer responded with a resounding “oh, definitely not.”
After three days of deliberation, the jury ruled Wednesday that the actress must pay $10 million in damages and another $5 million in fines, although the Fairfax County judge Penney Azcaratereduced this last amount to $350,000 dollars.
In his initial lawsuit, Johnny Depp claimed $50 million for the article published in 2018 in the newspaper Washington Post and in which Heard claimed, without mentioning the actor’s name, that he was a victim of domestic abuse.
Although, in reality, Heard will not have to pay that $ 10 million in full, as the jury also concluded that Depp must compensate his ex-wife with $ 2 million for a comment by his previous lawyer that was also considered defamatory towards Heard.
“The trial became a zoo”
Regarding the sentence, the lawyer considered that it sends a “horrible” message and represents a step “back” in the attempts to eradicate domestic violence.
“What it means is that unless you take out your phone and record your partner hitting you, no one is going to believe you,” he said.
Likewise, she was emphatic in denouncing that the Fairfax County court allowed “a series of things that should not have been allowed.”
“It was like the Roman Colosseum. That’s how I lived the whole case. I was against cameras being allowed in the courtroom and I put that on the record, due to the sensitive nature of the matter. But it became a zoo,” Bredehoft said.
According to the lawyer, the attention of millions of people and the pressure of Depp’s fans created a caricature of Heard on social networks that ended up “demonizing” the actress and could influence the verdict of the jury.
“They went home every night. They have families. Their families use social networks. We had a 10-day recess for a judicial conference. There’s no way they weren’t influenced by it,” she argued.
For the hypothetical appeal, the lawyer announced that they will present much of the evidence that was not admitted in this process and that they were part of the similar trial that was held in London, where Depp lost another defamation case against The Sun newspaper for an article. that described the actor as a “batterer of women”.
“The court concluded that Depp committed up to 12 acts of domestic violence against Amber,” Bredehoft recalled.
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