Substitute while the actions of the article are loading
A Fairfax County Court jury heard final arguments in the controversial trial between movie stars and ex-spouses Johnny Depp and Amber Heard on Friday, but after hours of deliberation decided to resume work after the holiday weekend.
Depp has filed a defamation lawsuit against his ex-wife over a 2018 publication she wrote in The Washington Post, in which she is mentioned as a public figure representing domestic violence. Depp, who is seeking $ 50 million, claims the article has damaged his career and denies allegations of abuse. Hurd sued Depp for $ 100 million after Depp’s lawyer, Adam Waldman, made several statements in the media describing her allegations as untrue. (The Post is not a defendant in any of the cases.)
According to Depp, the jury weighed seven questions, including whether Hurd had made or published three separate statements in the document, including the title; if they hint or hint at something about Depp; and if so, whether they were forged and / or made with actual malice. According to Hurd’s counterclaim, the jury must decide six questions, including whether Waldman, while acting as Depp’s agent, made the statements and whether they were false and / or made with real malice.
The seven-judge jury, which will resume the debate on Tuesday morning, will determine whether both are entitled to compensation and, if so, how much. They started discussing around 3 p.m.
Frequently Asked Questions: What to know when the Depp-Hurd test ends
Depp’s team tried to portray Hurd as vindictive and insulting, and lawyers say she deliberately ruined his career by accusing him of abuse. Depp’s lawyer, Camille Vazquez, said the Pirates of the Caribbean actor filed for divorce in May 2016, after a year of marriage, which angered Hurd. “She didn’t just want a divorce. She wanted to ruin it, “Vazquez said in closing remarks.
Defense attorneys say Depp has consistently abused Hurd, but that doesn’t really matter in the process, citing Freedom of Speech protected by the First Amendment, and that the documentation doesn’t actually describe any of the alleged abuses Hurd committed. . Instead, said Heard’s lawyer Ben Rothenborn, he is focusing on her “post-Johnny Depp experience.”
“We’re not running away from the fact that when she was discussing becoming a public victim of domestic violence, Amber was talking about her attempt to report domestic violence against Johnny Depp,” Rothenborn said. “But that doesn’t make the article or the Johnny Depp statements.”
Before closing speeches began, Judge Penny Azkarate announced that the names of the jurors would be sealed for one year, given the resonant nature of the case. The process, which began on April 12, garnered a great deal of attention and reflected, even with the raging war in Ukraine, the potential repeal of the Rowe vs. Wade and numerous mass shootings.
Depp’s fandom turned out to be very much for the trial, sleeping on the sidewalks overnight to get a wrist for spectators to enter the courtroom. Hundreds gathered behind the courthouse until 8:30 a.m. Friday, eagerly awaiting Depp’s arrival on the final day, which may be in court. “When you hear motorcycles, it’s time,” one group advised. Some were dressed in pirate costumes, and a couple brought a pair of cars named Donald and Danny, dressed in ties like Depp’s legal team.
In a courtroom full to the brim, both sides made emotional pleas to the jury. Vazquez asked the jury to return to Depp “his life, what is at stake in this process is the good name of man”; while Rothenborn called Depp’s case “accusing the victim of his most heinous act.”
“Think of the message that Mr. Depp and his lawyers are sending to Amber and in addition to every victim of domestic violence everywhere: If you haven’t taken pictures, this hasn’t happened. If you took pictures, they are fake. If you haven’t told your friends, you’re lying. If you told your friends, they are part of the scam, “Rothenborn added.
Vazquez told the jury that Hurd had fabricated her allegations and that her testimony was nothing more than “performance, the role of a lifetime.” She repeated a question Depp’s team asked during the trial: Why are there no medical records or photos detailing Hurd’s alleged injuries, and why has no one seen Depp mistreat her?
“As an actress, she was filmed all the time. Where are the photos of the horrific injuries Hurd describes? asked Vazquez, who also wondered why, if Hurd was so afraid that Depp would get drunk and beat her, she once gave him a knife engraved with “to death.”
“This is MeToo without MeToo,” Depp’s lawyer Benjamin Chu later said.
Rottenborn, pointing to Depp’s heavy drinking and drug use, doubted how the actor could even fairly explain what happened. He reminded the jury of numerous allegations of abuse, including those in Hicksville, a luxury trailer park in Southern California, where Depp claims to have conducted a violent search of Hurd’s cavity before breaking a trailer; on a flight to Moscow, during which Hurd said he hit her and threatened to break the flight attendant’s wrist; and in Australia, where she said he sexually assaulted her with a bottle of alcohol.
Both sides also drew attention to Depp’s notorious severed finger, which also occurred during the 2015 battle in Australia. Depp claims Hurd hurt him by throwing a bottle of vodka at him; the defense suggests that he injured himself. Rothenborn said it didn’t matter: “Amber could have cut him off with an ax, and it has nothing to do with whether or not Mr. Depp mistreated her.”
The concluding arguments represent a strange dichotomy that exists during the process in which Hurd and Depp and their witnesses seem to narrate the same events in completely different light. Jamie R. Abrams, a law professor at the University of Louisville, said that “mirror defamation lawsuits filed by both sides against each other” make these concluding arguments unique.
“Usually, the closing statements present the key strengths of the client’s case and highlight the weaknesses of the opponent’s case to show that the other party has not taken its weight,” Abrams said in an email. “Here, both cases have similar weaknesses, which seems to distort some of the focus in the concluding arguments, which you can usually see in court.
The two actors first met around 2008 or 2009, when Depp chose Hurd in The Diary of a Roma, based on Hunter S. Thompson’s book. Hurd’s role was described as a “dream woman.” They flirted on set, but they were both in other relationships at the time (Depp with the mother of his two children, Vanessa Paradis; Hurd and her wife, Tasha van Ree). When they reunited during the film’s prequel more than two years later, they were both unattached.
The two began a stormy romance while promoting the film, and Depp said he considered her the “perfect partner.” But after about a year, as many people testified, things began to fall apart and the two began to quarrel all the time. The couple married in February 2015, but in May 2016, Hurd filed for divorce and restraining order.
Hurd moved to Los Angeles as a teenager in the early 2000s to pursue acting, winning small roles in feature films such as Pineapple Express, Zombieland and Friday Night Lights.
Her vacation came in 2017, when she was chosen in the film for the superhero “Justice League” as an underwater princess Mera. This led to a partnership role of the same character, now the protagonist’s love interest, in the following year “Aquaman”, a film that won more than $ 1 billion worldwide. She will reappear as Mera in “Aquaman and the Last Kingdom” next year, although she has testified that her role has been reduced and said she believes this is due to the negative publicity surrounding Depp’s case – especially from the statements of Waldman, Depp’s lawyer, called her allegations “fraud for abuse.”
Depp, meanwhile, became a teenage idol in the late 1980s after being cast in the Fox television series 21 Jump Street, which follows the adventures of undercover young police officers. He earned a reputation for playing eccentric characters, often in Tim Burton films such as the titular “Edward Scissors” and Willie Wonka in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” but achieved worldwide fame as Captain Jack Sparrow in “Disney Pirates.” for billions of dollars. The Caribbean franchise in 2003, which earned him the first of three Oscar nominations for Best Actor.
Over the past decade, however, he has suffered a series of blurry films and box office failures, including Mortdecai and Alice in the Mirror. The defense claims that the heavy use of drugs and alcohol has caused a decline in his career, but Depp blames Hurd for the allegations of abuse.
Mitra Ahurayan, a Beverly Hills-based entertainment lawyer focused on the entertainment business, said jurors were “probably tired of what has been going on for so long.” She mentioned Rothenborn, stressing that the jury should not believe that Depp was abusive, only that he failed to prove during the trial that he had never mistreated her even once. “To hear this as a member of the jury is probably a great relief. It just makes it a lot simpler than “Okay, who’s abusing more?” She said.
Helena Andrews-Dyer, Sonia Rao and Paul Schwartzman contributed to this report
Add Comment