Amber Heard filed documents on Tuesday with the Court of Appeals in Virginia in which she outlined her upcoming appeal against Johnny Depp’s $10.35 million defamation judgment. The actress’ attorneys used the four-page filing, known as the Appellant’s Designation of Assignments of Error, to detail the grounds on which she intends to file the appeal.
- Proper documents of appeal will be filed at a later date. Media outlets reporting on the case note that Amber Heard will file a full and proper appeal at a later date, but that this brief was simply to inform the court of her intention to do so and offer an explanation for why she feels such an appeal would be appropriate.
- Heard believes she did not receive justice. In Monday’s filing, the actress alleges that since Johnny Depp won this trial but lost in the UK, that’s proof of wins that are “inherently and irreconcilably inconsistent.” As a result, she believes the $10.35 million judgment should be set aside.
- Note that Depp has also filed his own appeal. The day after Heard’s lawyers announced their intent to appeal in July 2022, Depp’s team filed their own documents appealing “all adverse rulings and from the final judgment order” of the court that oversaw the case in Fairfax County, Virginia.
- Heard, however, has 16 grounds on which she believes she can appeal. Her first claim is that the court should have dismissed the case since it didn’t belong in Virginia in the first place. She also claims that the court should have noted that Depp lost a similar libel suit in the UK not long before, and that ruling should have been allowed in evidence. Heard went on to say that the jury was wrong in ruling that the statements in her Washington Post op-ed, which were at the center of the defamation case, amounted to “actionable as statements of fact rather than non-actionable expressions of opinion.”
To read more about the filing in full, head over to Law & Crime, which has a complete rundown.
