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Topics: Amber Heard, Johnny Depp, US News
Daisy Phillipson
The legal battle between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard is not over just yet, as the Aquaman star's legal team have ordered a mistrial.
Documents, which were filed in Virginia on Friday 8 July, claim the wrong person served on the jury at the recent defamation trial, which ruled in favour of Depp.
Last month, the Pirates of the Caribbean star was awarded $15 million in damages over domestic abuse claims Heard made in a 2018 op-ed for The Washington Post, which the jury agreed defamed him.
This was capped at $10.35 million by the judge, and in a separate verdict Heard was awarded $2 million in damages via a counterclaim.
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However, in a new filing obtained by ET, Heard's legal team have requested a mistrial, alleging that an unidentified 77-year-old living in Virginia was summoned to jury duty but instead a 52-year-old living at that address with the same last name showed up to court.
They claim that the 52-year-old remained on the jury for the duration of the court case, and on these grounds the team are asking for verdict to be rendered invalid and for a new trial to go ahead.
The document reads: "Based on newly discovered facts and information that Juror No. 15 was not the individual summoned for jury duty on April 11, 2022, and therefore was not part of the jury panel and could not have properly served on the jury at this trial. Therefore, a mistrial should be declared and a new trial ordered."
It continues: "In this case, the Jury Panel List included an individual named [redacted] with a listed Date of Birth of [redacted], 1945 residing in [redacted], Virginia.
"This means the individual would have been 77 years old at the time of trial... The 52-year-old sitting on the jury for six weeks was never summoned for jury duty on April 11 and did not appear in the list as required."
The same issue was raised in an appeal submitted by Heard's team last week in which attorney Elaine Bredehoft claimed that Depp’s team ‘proceeded solely on a defamation by implication theory, abandoning any claims that Ms Heard’s statements were actually false’.
As well as requesting the court to investigate whether one person improperly served on the jury for the trial, the 48-page document went on to say that due to ‘inconsistent verdicts’ the judgement should be set aside or a new trial ordered.
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