The Johnny Depp and Amber Heard defamation trial might technically be over, but with each passing day, it’s becoming clearer we’re not even close to a legal resolution. On Friday, Heard’s attorneys filed a 43 page motion in an attempt to get the court to overturn the more than ten million dollar judgment against their client. The filing runs down a host of different reasons they feel the verdict should be thrown out, including problems with Juror 15.
We have no idea who Juror 15 is. His identity is legally protected, but according to Heard’s legal team, his inclusion in the jury may have “compromised” her due process. That’s because, they claim, his age was reportedly listed incorrectly on the juror list panel. He was apparently identified as being born in 1945, but he looks much younger and seems, in their estimation, to have actually been born decades later. They want it investigated as to whether he actually received a summons to appear and want to look into whether he was properly vetted by the court. Here’s a quote from the filing per Law & Crime…
The Court should investigate whether juror 15 properly served on the jury. On the juror list panel sent to counsel before voir dire, the Court noted that the individual who would later be designated juror 15 had a birth year of 1945. Juror 15, however, was clearly born later than 1945. Publicly available information demonstrates that he appears to have been born in 1970. This discrepancy raises the question whether juror 15 actually received a summons for jury duty and was properly vetted by the Court to serve on the jury.
In the same legal filing, Heard’s team admits jury panel errors aren’t ordinarily grounds for getting a verdict overturned, but they claim there’s a possibility Juror 15 isn’t who he says he is, which would be, in their estimation, a due process violation. The allegation is just one in a long list of problems they run down in this most recent filing.
Amber Heard’s team claims Johnny Depp didn’t actually prove that he suffered that much financial hardship because of the op-ed. They argue it was very unlikely the actor would have appeared in Pirates Of The Caribbean 6, and they argue Depp himself said he wouldn’t have taken the role for one million alpacas. In addition, her team is arguing that what actually matters here is whether Heard believes she was abused. If she believed her own allegations, a jury can’t find she acted with malice, and they claim Depp’s legal team never proved she didn’t believe her own claims.
Johnny Depp and Amber Heard were only married from 2015 to 2017, but their relationship has lived on through a series of court cases and legal issues in the aftermath. Most recently, Depp sued Heard for defamation after she published an op-ed claiming she was the victim of domestic abuse. The televised six week trial proved enormously popular with the general public, and millions watched as both took the stand and hurled allegations against each other ranging from abuse to drug use to intentionally pooping in the bed.
The jury ultimately awarded mostly in favor of Johnny Depp. The jury ruled she acted with malice and defamed him on several counts and awarded him more than fifteen million dollars in damages, which was later reduced to ten million and change. They also found in her favor on one count over a statement Depp’s former attorney made and awarded her two million dollars. There was some hope the two would settle and move on after the trial, but this latest motion would seem to indicate their legal situation will continue.
No word on whether an investigation will be launched into Juror 15, but if anything shady does come out, expect to hear about it.