Amber Heard’s team has asked a judge to dismiss the verdict in her defamation case against her ex-husband Johnny Depp. The motion claims that Depp’s team did not provide sufficient evidence, that the Washington Post op-ed at the center of the case did not name Depp, and that one of the jurors was not in fact the same one who was vetted for the trial.
The motion to dismiss is considered standard procedure for parties that plan to appeal a case, a direction that Heard has indicated she plans to go down. After a trial that became an ugly, prolonged spectacle, Heard was found guilty on three counts of defamation over an op-ed she wrote claiming that she was a survivor of domestic abuse. Depp was also found guilty of one count of defamation, from one of his lawyers claims that Heard was fabricating a “hoax.” Heard was ordered to pay $10 million to Depp, and Depp was ordered to pay $2 million to Heard.
The move from Heard’s camp notably takes issue with Juror #15 potentially being a different person than who was summoned to court. The juror was ostensibly born in 1945, but according to Heard’s team, the person that was in the courtroom was far younger and, based on publicly available information, was 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,” Heard’s lawyers said in the motion.
