Amber Heard arrives for the Puma x Balmain x Cara Delevingne launch party at Milk Studios in Los Angeles in November 2019. File Photo by Chris Chew/UPI |
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July 9 (UPI) -- Amber Heard is seeking a mistrial after a jury in Fairfax County, Va., ruled largely in favor of her ex-husband Johnny Depp during their highly publicized defamation trial.
Heard's attorneys requested that Judge Penney Azcarate throw out the $10.35 million verdict awarded to the Pirates of the Caribbean star last month over allegations that one of the jurors had not actually been summoned to participate in the trial, according to redacted court documents published by Deadline.
The court documents, which were confirmed by the New York Daily News and CNN, were filed to supplement an earlier filing from June in which Heard's attorney Elaine Bredehoft first claimed that Juror 15 was not the same person listed on the jury panel.
Bredehoft alleged that the intended juror and the actual juror have the same last name and address but that the person who had been summoned to participate was born in 1945 and that the person who participated was born in 1970.
"It is deeply troubling for an individual not summoned for jury duty nonetheless to appear for jury duty and serve on a jury, especially in a case such as this," Bredehoft wrote in the document.
"This was a high-profile case, where the fact and date of the jury trial were highly publicized prior to and after the issuance of the juror summonses."
Bredhoft wrote in the document that a "mistrial should be declared and a new trial ordered," arguing that Heard's legal right to due process was compromised.
Depp, 58, filed the $50 million lawsuit against Heard, 35, after she published a 2018 op-ed in the Washington Post claiming that she was a victim of domestic violence though didn't name him. Heard countersued Depp for $100 million.
He was awarded $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages, though the latter were reduced to the state's statutory cap of $350,000.
The court also awarded $2 million in compensatory damages to Heard for her counterclaim that she had been defamed by Depp's attorney -- who had referred to her allegations of domestic violence as a "hoax."
Azcarate finalized the verdict in the case during a brief hearing at the Fairfax County court on June 25.
