Amber Heard appeals verdict in Johnny Depp defamation case

Amber Heard is seeking a retrial after her ex-husband Johnny Depp’s win in their libel case, claiming that the acrimonious court battle she lost was held in the wrong state.

Pirates of the Caribbean star Depp, 56, was awarded $15 million (£12.2m) in June after a court found that her Washington Post op-ed, where Heard described herself as a victim of domestic abuse, was defamatory.

However, her legal team has now filed for a retrial arguing that the trial, which took place in Fairfax, Virginia, should have taken place in California, where the once married couple lived together.

Virginia, where The Washington Post houses its servers, was an “entirely inconvenient forum with no connection to Depp or any meaningful connection to his claims,” reads the filing.

They also objected to the judge’s decision to exclude certain pieces of evidence, including therapy notes in which she reported being abused.

“If not reversed, the trial court’s exclusion of contemporaneous reports of domestic abuse to medical professionals will make it more difficult for other abuse victims to prove allegations of abuse, and likely deter them from coming forward,” the court filing says.

Under Virginia law, a group of judges will now decide the merits of the appeal.

The original case centred was sparked by a Washington Post op-ed in which Heard called herself a “public figure representing domestic abuse”. She did not name Depp, her former husband, personally.

Much of the trial centred around her allegations that Depp had subjected her to repeated physical abuse including punching and head butting.

Depp’s lawyers had denied the allegations, with the Pirates of the Caribbean star telling jurors that Heard was the abusive one in their relationship.

In filing the appeal, lawyers challenged the decision to allow the defamation case in Virginia to proceed at all, citing an unsuccessful British libel case brought by Depp against The Sun newspaper, which called him a “wife beater”.

In that case in November 2020, Judge Mr Justice Nicol said the Sun had proved what was in the article to be “substantially true”, finding that several alleged incidents of domestic violence had occurred.

Depp had disputed the findings but was not granted permission by judges to appeal the case.