Law&Crime Sidebar - Amber Heard Outlines Appeal Against Johnny Depp Victory

Episode Date: October 14, 2022

Amber Heard officially filed an appellate brief outlining the grounds on which she intends to appeal the $10.35 million judgment issued against her during her defamation trial with Johnny Depp. The Law&Crime Network's Jesse Weber and Angenette Levy have the latest in this ongoing legal battle.GUEST:Angenette Levy: https://twitter.com/Angenette5LAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergVideo Editing - Michael Deininger & Logan HarrisGuest Booking - Alyssa FisherSocial Media Management - Kiera BronsonSUBSCRIBE TO OUR OTHER PODCASTS:Court JunkieObjectionsThey Walk Among AmericaCoptales and CocktailsThe Disturbing TruthSpeaking FreelyLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. As against Amber Heard, we the jury award compensatory damages in the amount of $10 million. As against Amber Heard, we the jury award punitive. damages in the amount of $5 million. Amber Hurd lays out her grounds to appeal the monumental verdict in her trial against Johnny Debt. Sidebar's Angenet Levy comes on to discuss.

Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber. All right. All right. Let's go to an update right now on a major, major Hollywood case. Amber Hurd has listed her grounds for appeal after her infamous trial against actor Johnny Depp. It was meant to feed her. um need for conflict which is a need for conflict which is a need for violence it erupts out of nowhere

he said you think it's so funny you think it's funny you think you're a funny and he sought me again as you may recall the actors had sued each other for defamation the jury had sided with depth and found that Herd defame the Pirates of the Caribbean star in a Washington Post op-ed piece, calling him a domestic abuser. They awarded Depp $10.35 million in damages, but the jury also found that Depp had defamed Hurd through the public statements of his attorney who claimed that Hurd's claims were a hoax, and they actually awarded Amber Heard $2 million. And it was a massive trial that we covered out in Virginia here on Sidebar and on the Long Crime Network. Well, now, Amber Heard's legal team has filed a four-page document entitled appellant's designation of assignment of error.

Now, this is not an appellate brief. It's a special pleading under Virginia law. It just basically lists out all of the errors that were committed by the trial court. And a brief, an appellate brief will ultimately follow. But it kind of gives us a glimpse of where she's going in her appeal. So I wanted to talk a little bit about this. And I thought, who would be better? And my Johnny Deff, Amber Hurd, partner in crime, my co-hote on sidebar. And Jeanette Levy, who we, both of us were together in Virginia covering this case. And Jeanette, good to see you once again. You too, Jesse.

Let's go through it. There's a lot to go through here. We're not going to go through all the 16 points, but we picked out a few that might be interesting. So this is point number two, and this says, and it's actually matches with point number four. So the error that they said is, look, the trial court erred in denying the supplemental plea in bar and in ruling that the November 2nd, 2020 judgment of the United Kingdom High Court of Justice, Queen's bench division in Dept v. News Group newspapers does not foreclose Mr. Depp's claims. And they also say the trial court erred in excluding from evidence at trial, the November 2nd,

2020 judgment of the United Kingdom High Court of Justice, Queen's bench division in depth v. Newsgroup newspapers. That's a lot of legal language to say, my understanding is they should have allowed the jury to hear about what happened in the UK case, right? Yeah. And that's basically what they're saying. And the fact that the judge in that case, Justice Nichols, found that these allegations of abuse, according to him and his review and his presiding over the

trial were, quote, substantially true. He substantiated all but one of Amber Hurd's claims. But the real difference here was the fact that this was Johnny Depp suing the Sun newspapers and Dan Wooten for their words, calling him a wife beater, which he has always denied. So Amber Hurd wasn't a party to that case. She was a witness and she was the star witness for the son. So that's a big part of the reason why the son won that case. They were going on what Amber Hurd told them, or they were going on what they saw in the court documents in the LA case where she sought a restraining order. So basically, we heard a lot about the UK case in the trial. If you recall, they would refer to the UK transcript when cross-examining Johnny Depp. And they would question him

about his statements that he made on the stand in that trial. But we didn't really hear that Johnny Depp lost that case in the U.K. So this has been a point of contention between the herd and Depp teams for a long time. But it's a different country, different defendant being sued and different rules, frankly, in different rules of evidence. Yeah, I didn't think it was really relevant. I'm not sure that's their strongest point. What about this? Because this is something that we've heard a little bit from Elaine Breederhoft, who's Amber Heard. I said, hey, now former attorney who said that this should have come into Evans. This is point number five in their document. They say, the trial court erred in excluding from evidence

trial, A, medical records, including Ms. Hurd's contemporaneous communications with medical providers such as Dr. Laura Anderson, Dr. David Kippur, Ms. Debbie Lloyd, Ms. Erin Falati, Dr. Amy Banks, Dr. Connell Cowan, and Dr. Bonnie Jacobs. And B, Ms. Hurd's communications with several third parties, including Mr. Depp's employees and Ms. Hurd's employees, friends and family, about interactions with Mr. Depp, including reports of drug use, aggressive and abusive conduct, physical abuse, and her fear for her safety. So, walk me through what you think this means and whether or not it should have been allowed in. Well, they're talking about these contemporaneous communications, right? So she had talked about this Amber Hurd did in her

Dateline interview. And I think when they talk about contemporaneous communications, they may be talking maybe about text messages or we heard a lot about from her about Dr. Bonnie Jacobs in which Dr. Jacobs took notes during their sessions and things of that nature. But notes can't testify, right? You have to call a witness to introduce notes. And I always wondered during the trial, if she felt she had all of this very strong evidence, why isn't she calling Dr. Bonnie Jacobs to the stand to testify about this? Or why isn't she calling Dr. Kipper in her case in chief to talk about whatever she says

she told Dr. Kipper? So I don't know if that would have made these notes and possibly communications with her. I don't know if they would have made them admissible, but you can't just like hand the jury a stack of notes and say, hey, here are my notes. You can read these. So obviously, Judge Penny As Karate determined that that these were hearsay or couldn't be admitted. So it'll be interesting to see what they rule on this, this claim of the appellate court. I think it's interesting too because we heard from Dr. Kipper during Johnny Depp's case. So I would assume that they would have had the opportunity during that videotaped deposition. to question him about anything that Amber Heard may or may not have said to him. There were other people in this filing that were also testified in the trial like Debbie Lloyd. And yeah. And look, I mean, if we remember actually in those depositions that were played for the jury,

it starts and skiffs, right? There were parts that actually started. So what was cut out? Yeah, they were edited out. So what was cut out is important. I thought this one was interesting. And I'm curious your thoughts on it. This is number six.

So the trial, this is again, it's court in Amber Heard. The trial court erred in admitting evidence of trial related. to Ms. Hurd's pledge to donate money to charity and evidence related to Ms. Hurd's alleged abuse of third parties. That's interesting, right? Because that was that whole conversation about did she, you know, misrepresent what she was going to do with the money. And then I think the other part is about if Amber heard, if she engaged in any kind of abuse with an ex-girlfriend of hers, right? Right. And we actually heard about that in Johnny Depp's rebuttal case. If you recall, Tasia Van Rie, or her ex-partner, ex-wife, the police officer who was.

was a part of that, who was a part of the arrest at the Seattle Airport years ago, arresting Amber Heard for domestic violence. The charges were later dropped, of course, as we know. And Tasia Van Rhee put out a statement saying this was all a big misunderstanding. We heard about that in the rebuttal case because we heard from the police officer, Beverly Leonard, who was involved in that arrest. So I'm a little confused by this. Maybe they are saying that shouldn't have been allowed part of the rebuttal case. But also, we heard a lot the pledge to donate the money. and I guess the pledge versus donation. So I guess they're saying the jury shouldn't have heard about that.

But obviously that went to her credibility. And the Depp team was able to get that in front of the jury. I thought this one was a controversial moment. And this, I'd argue, might have a little teeth, Anjanet. This is number 12. It says the trial court erred in denying the motion to strike and to set aside the jury's verdict with regard to Mr. Depp's failure to prove publication by misheard of the statement, I spoke up against sexual violence and faced our culture's wrath. That has to change. Very controversial, right? Because that was the headline of the Washington Post article. And she didn't necessarily write it. So what do you think about that? Well, she didn't write it, of course. We know that. We know that the Washington Post would have been the publisher of the publication. They write the headlines. But she certainly retweeted it. And I think we've talked about this in the past about how in producing news content, I've always been.

taught that I've had legal training as a journalist in this, that you have to be careful what you tweet and what you put on Facebook because they're your words. So they were saying that basically her retweeting of the article with that headline and with commentary was an act of publishing. She's saying no. But she certainly didn't call up the Washington Post. We heard no testimony that she called them up and said, oh, I don't know about this whole sexual violence thing. You know, maybe we should tweak that because it could make it sound like I was accusing my ex-husband of that. She did kind of, she's, I guess, saying she was sexually abused earlier in her life. So she could have been referring to that, I guess. But this is, this whole thing was about defamation

by implication. And the act of retweeting that op-ed with commentary, the judge said that the jury could consider that. And they found her liable on that. So you always have to be a bit careful about what you tweet and post on Facebook because you're basically endorsing the content, especially if you retweet an article and then add commentary to it. Are you telling me when people put in their bios retweets, not endorsements? That's not good enough. I don't think that really sticks. Yeah. I don't think that that I think that disclaimer is kind of like doesn't really matter. So because I think if you are, I mean, it depends on how you frame it, right? I mean, she wrote her name was on the article, right? The op-ed. She wrote it or at least wrote it. Or at least wrote.

it with the assistance of the ACLU. So her name's on it, right? It's her, it's her story. It's her life she's talking about. So I think that's that she was, if the jury believed that she was lying about that, they were going to possibly believe she was lying about other things as well, the sexual violence part. And, and Jette, before I let you go, we have about a minute left. I want to ask you real quick about this. One of their other main contentions is that the verdicts were inconsistent, that they were inherently and reconcilably inconsistent. You agree with that? You know, I think it is strange that they found her liable on all three counts of defamation that he alleged that Depp alleged, but then found Johnny Depp liable for the words of Adam Waldman relating to that May 21st, 2016 incident in the fact that he's saying that she and her friends like staged this hoax, that the fact that they roughed up the place and spilled a little wine. I don't understand. I've never quite understood that because if you think that she, was lying about what she said in the op-ed, then don't you think she was lying about May 21st,

2016 as well? I don't know. It does seem a little bit odd. So maybe it was just that maybe they didn't think the friends were involved in the alleged hoax. I don't know. That's the only thing I can think of. I think that makes sense. Look, they're going to make arguments. It'll be up to an appellate court to see if they believe those arguments and if they're enough to actually change the verdict. And Jeanette Levy, thank you so much. Good seeing you. You too. Thanks for having me. And thanks everybody for joining us here on Sidebar. Please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Weber.

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