After losing a similar libel lawsuit in the UK, Johnny Depp and his team stunned many legal experts by winning a defamation trial in the United States against ex-wife Amber Heard.
A jury found in favor of all three of Depp’s allegations against Heard after 23 days of testimony and less than three days of deliberation, concluding that she had falsely and knowingly accused him of domestic abuse with the objective of destroying his reputation.
Depp lost a libel case in the United Kingdom in 2020, after suing The Sun, a British tabloid, for branding him a “wife beater.”
In that case, a court determined that much of the domestic abuse Heard claimed had happened.
That’s why several legal experts were surprised by Depp’s triumph in the US justice system, which has a higher threshold for proving libel of a prominent figure.
In the United Kingdom, it is typically easier to win a libel action since the defendant must show the truth of their allegedly defamatory comments, but in the United States, it is the plaintiff’s responsibility to prove that the allegedly defamatory statements were false.
In the United States, it’s far more difficult for a public figure plaintiff to prove the remarks were made with ‘actual malice,’ which means the defendant knew the statements were false when she made them.
On Thursday, DailyMail.com spoke with a number of legal experts to discuss the significant distinctions between the trial and what might have tilted the scales in Depp’s favor.
Depp’s victory, according to Romano Law partner and Chair of the Litigation Department Nicole Haff, was aided by the fact that he had a jury trial.
‘Juries are unpredictable,’ she said. ‘The UK case was decided by a judge and not a jury. Many trial techniques that are effective on jurors just don’t work on judges.
‘Remember, most judges were trial attorneys before taking the bench, so trial technique holds less weight with a judge.’
Criminal attorney Joshua Ritter, who previously served as a prosecutor with the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office, agreed with Haff’s analysis.
‘The system we have here is a jury of your peers. Judges are not in the category of our peers. They live their lives day-in and day-out analyzing the law, which is different than than our ‘peers,” he said. ‘Juries look at cases from a much more common sense, Plain Joe way.
‘Heard testified in such a ‘dramatic, emotional’ way and jurors used common sense to say ‘we don’t believe you’re being truthful with us,” Ritter said.
He argued that if jurors thought Heard was lying on some accounts, it would lead them to believe she could be lying on others.
‘Heard couldn’t produce evidence to collaborate her story so the jury thinks ‘at best you’re exaggerating to us, at the worst you’re lying,” he added.
In the US case, Depp’s attorneys employed the DARVO strategy, an acronym for deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender, which transformed Depp from the alleged abuser to the victim.
‘Depp’s team did a masterful job on all fronts of that type of strategy,’ Ritter said. ‘They gave not an inch to anything Heard had to testify too, which is hard when you’re dealing with a female alleged victim of both of domestic and sexual violence.
‘You have to go after that person in cross examination with a delicate touch, but Heard pushing back and being argumentative gave them permission to go against her.’
‘Depp did a fantastic job of presenting himself as ‘much more authentic and convincing as someone who had been suffering at the hands of domestic abuse’ than Heard,’ Ritter found, despite the fact that he wasn’t a victim in the trial.’
Haff echoed the claim, telling DailyMail.com: ‘In the US case, Depp’s team effectively called Heard’s credibility into question.’
‘This is important because Depp’s attorneys had to convince the jury that the statements in Heard’s 2018 op-ed were either knowingly false or were made with reckless disregard for the truth. Legally, this is a difficult task. They did this by attacking Heard’s credibility, especially as it relates to Depp.
‘Depp’s team presented evidence that the relationship between the actors was highly dysfunctional. Depp’s lawyers also painted Heard as the abuser and Depp as the good guy and victim of abuse.’
In the end, a US jury awarded Depp $15 million in total, with $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages.
The damages were subsequently limited to the Commonwealth of Virginia’s legal maximum of $350,000 in punitive damages, leaving Depp with a total of $8.35 million.
Only one of Heard’s three countersuit charges was successful, and it was linked to Depp’s lawyer’s claims that she and her friends smashed their flat before calling the cops.
She obtained only $2 million in compensatory damages and no punitive damages out of the $100 million she sought. Her publicist, Alafair Hall, claimed that she intends to appeal the ruling.