There is a courtroom at the Fairfax County Circuit Courthouse. Brendan Smialowski is a photographer.
The legal drama is far from over after the jury came back with a victory for Johnny Depp. The process of appealing the decision will likely take years. Time spoke to experts about what will happen in the case, Heard's chances of winning an appeal, and how far this legal fight could go.
There is a little background on the case. Heard called herself a "public figure representing domestic abuse" in a Washington Post op-ed. Heard didn't name the man as her abuser. The opinion piece hurt his career according to the actor. Heard accused Waldman of defaming her by calling her claims a hoax in the Daily Mail.
In the U.K., the actor lost a libel suit against The Sun in 2020. In that case, a British judge found that The Sun's statement that Johnny Depp was a "wife beater" and that he had abused Heard at least 12 times was "credible". The outcome of that case was decided by a judge and not a jury.
The jury in the US gave awards to both Heard and Depp. They found that Heard had defamed the actor with malice and awarded him $10 million in damages and $5 million in punitive damages. The judge reduced the damages to Virginia's statutory cap. Heard was awarded $2 million in compensation by the jury. Many are confused by the verdict since it suggests that they believed Heard's claims of abuse when they said they were false.
Heard's team will decide what to do if they appeal the case. The jury seemed to think that Heard's story wasn't believable. Experts agree that appellate courts tend to be reluctant to revisit credibility judgments made by juries. Rebekah Sullivan is an attorney who focuses on family law. According to the lawyers who spoke to Time, Heard's team will try to overturn the verdict on the basis that the jury was influenced by what they heard outside the courtroom.
The myth of the perfect victim is perpetuated by the Depp- Heard trial.
An appeals court won't give a ruling until Heard's team makes a decision. David Ring is a Los Angeles civil trial lawyer. The experts thought the appeal would take at least two years. It will cost Heard hundreds of thousands of dollars in addition to the millions she has spent in legal fees, according to several attorneys who spoke with Time. You definitely have to pursue that when you are facing a fifteen million dollar judgement.
It is likely that Heard and her insurance company will have to put up a surety bond in order to raise money for the appeal. Heard's ability to post the bond is not guaranteed because her lawyers said this trial has been a financial burden.
If she goes ahead, her team may have a better chance in an appeals court than the jury did. The trial was broadcast live, jurors were not sequestered, and there were tons of pro-Depp commentary on social media. Sullivan expects the appellate portion of the case to focus more on legal arguments and less on the drama of the trial.
He said that the trial was a spectacle.
Read more about why you are seeing so many Johnny Depp defenders.
There would be no cameras or opportunity for Heard's testimony to be edited or misconstrued. The case in the Virginia Court of Appeals would be decided by sifting through documents written by both sides. The case could be appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court or the U.S. Supreme Court, depending on the outcome.
There are a lot of arguments Heard's team could make. Elaine Bredehoft said after the trial that she will focus on evidence. She believes that some of the evidence was pre-judging and that some of the evidence from Heard's team was suppressed at the trial.
There was a lot of evidence in this case. Ring said it was a lot. The basis for an appeal, though not a great one, is that things went far away from what the real issues were. He says that the basis of an appellate court's decision to overturn a jury verdict is not usually based on evidence.
Mary Anne Franks, a professor at University of Miami School of Law who focuses on civil rights, said that Heard's team might challenge the judge's decision to allow the trial to be live-streamed.
The legal system is still stacked against survivors.
The jury was told not to watch news about the trial at night. The jury might have been influenced by the fact that they were able to see the case through the lens of social media.
Sullivan thinks that the argument is a good one. The trial was covered in a circus of public opinion on social media. Families of the jurors have been following this case. They see the things that are posted on the internet. The jury is being shown things that weren't in the trial. It has a high likelihood of success if Heard's lawyers can argue that they were influenced by outside factors that weren't in the trial.
Ring thinks that the idea of sequestering juries has fallen out of favor in modern courtrooms. He says that it is not realistic to sequester juries for six weeks. The jurors from the trial can be interviewed by Heard's team. You have a basis for appeal if they interview them and the jurors say they followed the gossip website. I don't believe anyone will admit to that if it happened.
Heard's op-ed may rise to the level of defamation considering the specific words in the piece. Franks says that it strains credulity to argue that the op-ed harmed Depp in any way. His career was already struggling due to well- documented behavioral issues. Heard did not write the headline for the piece. She didn't actually follow it.
Heard's team could focus on the headline when appealing, according to Sullivan. Defamation is an exception to the right of freedom of speech. If people are held responsible for defamation if an article is inaccurate, that could cause major First Amendment problems for millions of users on the social media platform. It is possible that Heard's lawyers could focus on the First Amendment issue and take the case to the Supreme Court, according to Sullivan. If they want to take this all the way, they will need a First Amendment claim.
It may be worth the risk for Heard if she appeals her case. This is not a slam-dunk winner for Johnny Depp on appeal.
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