Amber Heard asks judge to set aside verdict due to false juror at trial
Steph Deschamps / July 5, 2022
According to TMZ, the actress' lawyers filed new documents this week in Virginia, asking the judge to overturn the verdict in favor of Johnny Depp entirely, dismiss the case or order a new trial.
The reasons they give are numerous, but basically fall into 3 categories: first, she argues that there was not enough evidence presented on Johnny Depp's side to convince a jury that her words had hurt her career and cost her roles and yet they decided she did it anyway.
Amber's lawyers argue that Johnny Depp's career was already on the rocks - including within the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise - before her December 2018 editorial, yet she was found responsible for that.
In addition, Amber heard's team claims that Johnny Depp and his lawyers have failed to prove that she acted with actual malice.
They also insist that Amber Heard never named Johnny Depp in the 2018 article.
On top of that, Amber and her team claim that one of the jurors who decided her fate may not have been the person summoned to court, and that the court did not notice this by not examining them properly. According to TMZ, it was juror #15, whose birth year on the paper is 1945.
Amber's team says they did a quick search on this alleged impostor - who they say is clearly younger than that - and it appears that this person could be born in 1970.
As a result, they want the court to investigate this case. If it turns out that he was mistakenly on the jury, that's just one more reason to drop the whole thing and start over.
A judge has not yet ruled on his request. Johnny Depp's lawyer, Ben Chew, said that this was to be expected and that there was nothing substantial in the petition.