An insurance company has sued Amber Heard in an effort to avoid paying ex-husband Johnny Depp's multi-million dollar defamation judgment against her.
lawandcrime.com
An insurance company is suing actress
Amber Heard on a three-pronged request: (1) that it be absolved of any duty to pay for her defense in a
recent defamation case by her ex-husband
Johnny Depp, (2) that it not be required to pay the multi-million dollar judgment Depp won against her, and (3) that it not have to pay any costs of
ongoing litigation associated with an appeal.
The New York Marine and General Insurance Company filed the suit against Heard on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. New York Marine insured Heard from July 18, 2018 through July 18, 2019 — a crucial time period for the defamation case. That time frame includes the date Heard wrote and retweeted a now-infamous
Washington Post op-ed — a piece in which she claimed she was “a public figure representing domestic abuse.” The headline discussed Heard “speaking up against sexual violence” and “facing our culture’s wrath.”
The period of time New York Marine insured Heard also includes the March 1, 2019 filing date of Depp’s defamation lawsuit. The suit was filed in Fairfax County, Virginia, because computer servers for
The Washington Post are located there and because the paper’s printing plant is located Springfield, Virginia.
The insurance company’s suit claims Heard was covered by a $1 million insurance policy from July 2018 through July 2019.
[…]
Notably, Heard also had a homeowners insurance policy through Travelers Insurance at the time she wrote the
Washington Post op-ed. In fact, a representative from Travelers Insurance was in court during the defamation trial each day, seated in the gallery behind Heard.
In a
separate case filed last year, Travelers Insurance sued New York Marine for what the former company called the latter’s “failure to meet its obligation to provide [Heard] with independent counsel and other counsel necessary to defend [Heard].” The result of that alleged failure, according to Travelers, was that Travelers was unfairly forced to pay for its share of the defense. The judge in that
case, which was also filed in the Central District of California, was
asked to stay the proceedings for 65 days in May.