A Virginia jury asked a judge on Tuesday to clarify what they need to consider to find whether the headline of Amber Heard's editorial defamed Johnny Depp.
lawandcrime.com
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Handed 37 pages of detailed instructions, the jury will be asked to look into three statements that Depp claims to be defamatory. The jury question only asked about the one contained in the headline.
The other two statements that Depp alleges to be defamatory are Heard’s depiction of herself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse” and her assertion that she had the “rare vantage point of seeing, in real time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse.”
Rottenborn insists that those phrases hold true regardless of whether or not the jury credits Heard’s allegations against Depp, but Depp’s legal team claims that this argument is a fig leaf for the editorial’s true goal to smear him as a sexual assailant and a domestic abuser.
Heard acknowledged on the witness stand that she wrote the editorial with Depp in mind. Emails shown to the jury showed that an ACLU representative told the
Postthat the editorial was about how Heard was “beaten up” by Depp.