Johnny Depp’s lawyers are arguing that the actor should not bear the consequences of his lawyer’s actions, which is the only reason he was found guilty of defaming his ex Amber Heard and ordered to pay $2 million. They called the ruling “erroneous” in their appeal case.
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Johnny Depp’s -Legal Team Praises Johnny Depp’s Win And Slams Amber Heard’s One Win As “Erroneous”
Okay, seems like the gruelling court case between Johnny Depp and ex-wife Amber Heard is about to start up again. Immediately after Amber Heard lost against Johnny Depp in all three counts of his defamation case, the “Aquaman” actress’s lawyer Elaine Bredehoft announced that she’ll be appealing the case.
However, when Amber Heard and her legal team moved to appeal the case, Johnny Depp and his team countered it by appealing as well, in hopes of taking away the only count she was ruled in favor of.
Here’s a quick recap: in June 1, a seven-person jury ruled that Heard, 36, did indeed defame her ex-husband Depp, 59, in a 2018 op-ed she penned for Washington Post about surviving domestic nd sexual violence, even though he was not named in the article.
He won all three of his $50 million defamation claims, bringing his damage charges to $10 million, capped as a result of a Virginia law. On the other hand, Heard, who doubled her countersuit defamation claims to $100 million, won one of her claims and was awarded $2 million.
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On Wednesday, his team officially filed their counter appeal in the Virginia Court of Appeals – their main point revolved around the argument that Depp should not be held liable for comments made by his attorney.
The statement in question was made to the Daily Mail by Depp’s lawyer Adam Waldman for an article published on April 27, 2020. In the piece, Waldman was quoted to have said that Heard and her friends set up Depp by calling the cops with a “hoax” of abuse claims back in 2016. Later on, it was found that Waldman had become an agent for Depp when he made the statement.
Johnny Depp’s Legal Team Calls the Actor’s Attorney Adam Waldman “An Independent Contractor” In the court documents, made available online by Law and Crime network, Depp’s team, led by attorney Benjamin Chew, argued that even though their client received “emphatic favorable verdict” from the jury, “the trial court was confronted with a number of novel and complex legal and factual issues, and although the trial court decided the vast majority of those issues sensibly and correctly, a few rulings were erroneous.”
The documents add, “Ms. Heard presented no evidence at trial that Mr. Depp was personally involved in directing or making any of the three Waldman Statements. Indeed, Mr. Depp testified that he had never even seen the Waldman Statements prior to the filing of the Counterclaim in August of 2020.”
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Depp’s team argued that “Mr. Waldman is an independent contractor, whose allegedly tortious conduct is not automatically attributable to Mr. Depp” and “no evidence of Mr. Waldman’s actual malice was presented at trial” by Heard’s legal team.
“This Court should reverse the judgment on Ms. Heard’s Counterclaim as to the April 27 Waldman Statement, but should otherwise affirm the judgment in Mr. Depp’s favor,” they concluded. Heard’s Team Is Yet To Respond To This Latest Development.
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