Actor Johnny Depp won a resounding legal victory against Amber Heard in a US court on Wednesday, even though jurors concluded that the ex-spouses had defamed each other in the press, after a bitter trial which revealed the lackluster private lives of two Hollywood celebrities. After some thirteen hours of deliberation, the seven jurors of the Fairfax court, near Washington, ruled that the title and two passages from a tribune, published in 2018 by Amber Heard in the Washington Post, contained defamatory remarks against the star of Pirates of the Caribbean and awarded him $ 15 million in damages. Clearly, these five men and two women estimated unanimously that Amber Heard had made false statements by describing herself as a victim of domestic violence, and that she had acted “with malicious intent”, even if she did not name her ex-husband in this text. The actress 36 years old, present in court, received the verdict with a serious face, seeming to acknowledge the blow. Absent from the courtroom on Wednesday, Johnny Depp, 58, reacted to him in the form of a message posted on Instagram. “The jury brought me back to life,” he said. “The best is yet to come and a new chapter has finally opened,” he added. He said he had never raised a hand on a woman during the trial, which lasted six weeks and offered uncompromising plunge into the intimacy of the two Hollywood stars. Believing that the published tribune had ruined his reputation and his career, Johnny Depp demanded 50 million dollars in compensation. Amber Heard, who appeared in particular in Justice League and Aquaman, had counter-attacked and demanded double, estimating that three declarations of a Johnny Depp’s ex-lawyer to the Daily Mail in 2020 were in turn defamatory. The jury only answered in the affirmative for one of them, and awarded two million dollars in compensation to the actress. “Disappointment” Ms. Heard confided her “inexpressible disappointment”. She explained in a statement: “I am devastated that the mountain of evidence was not sufficient to address the far greater power, influence and ascendancy of my ex-husband. […]. I am even more disappointed by what this verdict means for other women. It’s a setback. This challenges the idea that violence against women should be taken seriously.” Johnny Depp was on tour in the United Kingdom, where he participated in several concerts of British singer Jeff Beck. In court, some Dozens of people rejoiced at the announcement of the verdict. In his press release, Johnny Depp praised “the outpouring of love” expressed by the hundreds of fans who massed each day in the courtroom and at the entrances to the court to support him.The trial, broadcast live on television, resulted in an unpacking of the couple’s private life, in front of millions of viewers around the world.Dozens of hours of testimonies and audio or video recordings revealed details of their romantic relationship enamelled with disputes, far removed from the glamor of Hollywood, between 2011 and 2016. of alcohol and refused to go to drug treatment. He would have raped her with a bottle of alcohol a month after their marriage, in March 2015, in Australia where the actor was filming episode 5 of the Pirates. That day, Johnny Depp had the end of a finger severed and was hospitalized. He claims it’s because of the glare from a bottle thrown by Amber Heard. She assures that he injured himself. After another argument in May 2016, during which Johnny Depp allegedly threw a phone in her face, she filed for divorce for domestic violence. Since then, she says she became the target of a social media smear campaign that wiped out her career. The actor meanwhile denounced “staggering” accusations and assured that it was on the contrary his wife who was violent. This trial, before a civil chamber, sounds like revenge for Johnny Depp, who had his complaint dismissed. in libel in London in 2020 against the tabloid The Sun, which called him an “abusive husband”. The two actors each claim to have lost between 40 and 50 million dollars in fees since the publication of the tribune.
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