Actor Amber Heard said that she plans to settle the defamation case brought against her by her ex-husband Johnny Depp. Heard recently had filed an appeal after a Virginia jury mostly sided with Depp in June in the widely-watched case.
“I make this decision having lost faith in the American legal system, where my unprotected testimony served as entertainment and social media fodder,” Heard said in an Instagram post on Monday morning.
Heard, 36, had previously been ordered pay more than $10m in damages to Depp, 56. Depp, meanwhile, was ordered to pay Heard $2m after she filed a countersuit accusing him of defamation after his lawyer, Adam Waldman, called her abuse claims a “hoax.”
Heard wrote on Instagram that by settling she can finally “emancipate” herself from the situation “on terms I can agree to.” She said that of those conditions, she “made no admission. This is not an act of concession. There are no restrictions or gags with respect to my voice going forward.”
Heard also criticized the U.S. justice system saying that in that court room “popularity and power mattered more than reason and due process.”
In comparison, she said the courts in the UK protected Heard against Depp in another case.
“When I stood before a judge in the UK, I was vindicated by a robust, impartial and fair system, where I was protected from having to give the worst moments of my testimony in front of the world’s media, and where the court found that I was subjected to domestic and sexual violence,” she wrote.
Heard was referencing to the decision from a British court in 2020 in a non-criminal case that ruled against Depp’s claims that the tabloid, “The Sun,” committed libel for calling the actor a “wife beater.” The judge adjudged that the published report was substantially true and that 12 of Heard’s 14 allegations about episodes of physical assault were supportable.
Heard’s 2018 op-ed in “The Washington Post” was titled: “I spoke up against sexual violence — and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change.” She didn’t name her ex-husband specifically in the op-ed, in which Heard called for change in how the U.S. treats abuse survivors and urged support for the Violence Against Women Act.
Also Read: Musk To Step Down After Twitter Poll Result
