Law&Crime Sidebar - Johnny Depp Pushes to Reverse $2M Verdict in Favor of Amber Heard

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Starting point is 00:00:35 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. Johnny Depp will appeal after a jury finds him liable for the words of his lawyer in the defamation case with his ex-wife, Amber Heard. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy and welcome to Law and Crime Sidebar podcast. Well, we have been telling you that Johnny Depp plans to appeal after a jury found him liable for this a statement his lawyer, Adam Waldman made to the Daily Mail back in 2020. This statement has to do with the events of May 21st, 2016, which was a critical date in Amber

Starting point is 00:01:20 Hurd and Johnny Depp's relationship. This is the night that Johnny Depp says he went to the penthouse. that he once shared with Amber Hurd to tell her that their relationship was over. He said that he was going to collect some of his belongings and he was planning to go on tour in Europe with his band, the Hollywood Vampires. At that time, both Hurd and Depp say that they argued that it became kind of heated, but there's a differing account of what happened after that. Amber Hurd claims that Johnny Depp threw her cell phone at her face, leaving a mark by her eye and on her cheek. Johnny Depp says that's not true. And Amber

Starting point is 00:01:56 heard made it all up. Then there were two calls to 911 placed by Amber Heard's friends that night. The first called to 911, the police show up. They see that there's nothing wrong. There are no injuries, apparently. They said Amber Heard's face was red from crying, and they left. We're going to take just a minute here to thank our friends Brian and Chrissy at the commercial break podcast. And you know why we're doing that? Because they gave us a little bit of cash to do it. Brian and Chrissy and the commercial break look at burning questions like, should I learn a Martian light language? And do television preachers have big enough airplanes? Well, I know you guys have really never asked yourselves those questions, but the commercial break has those questions answered for you. And that's because they are one of Apple's top three comedy improv podcasts. And you can find it on all of the major podcast platforms like Apple, Spotify, Google, and many more. And you can also watch the commercial break at YouTube.com slash the commercial break, and you'll also find it on the podcast website, TCBpodcast.com. Brian and Chrissy are best friends, and they get to

Starting point is 00:03:05 gather every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to talk about life, love, and the pursuit of absurdity. Things like TV dating shows, monster hunters, terrible psychic readings, you name it, they've got it for you. So check it out. The commercial break is available anywhere you get your podcast and at YouTube.com slash the commercial break and TCB Podcast.com. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but guess what? It's free. Then a second call to 911 was placed. This is what Adam Waldman said to the Daily Mail back in 2020 about that second call to 911. He gave an interview to the paper and discussed the second 911 call and what he believes was behind it. This was an ambush a hoax. They set Mr. Depp up by calling the cops, but the first attempt didn't do the trick.

Starting point is 00:03:59 The officers came to the penthouses, thoroughly searched an interview, and left after seeing no damage to face or property. So Amber and her friends spilled a little wine and roughed the place up, got their story straight under the direction of a lawyer and a publicist, and then placed a second call to 911. Do you see that statement? I do. Did you make those statements? There are two parts to what you've shown me. The first part didn't have quotation marks around it. And I'm not asking about that.

Starting point is 00:04:32 Or it said nothing could be considered credible. That's not quoting me. The part with the quote marks, I believe I said that yes. And joining me now to discuss Johnny Depp's assignment of errors is Kathleen Lazzardo. She is a plaintiff's attorney out of Texas and she and I both followed the Dept v. Hurd case very, very closely. So, Catherine, welcome back to Sidebar. Thanks for coming on. First of all, explain to us what an assignment of errors is for people who may not understand that.

Starting point is 00:05:00 Assignment of errors in Virginia has chief function, which is to let the Court of Appeals and the opposing party or the appellee know what the appellant, meaning the person appealing, actually will rely upon in the ruling of the lower court. here, since we're going to be talking about assignment of errors by Johnny Depp, then Johnny Depp is step-pellant and whatever he puts in his assignment of errors are the rulings or errors that he believed happened in Judge Escarati's court so that he can notify the court of appeal and unbeheard what rulings he will be appealing from. So let's go through these really quickly. In the first of assignment of error and Johnny Depp's attorneys have listed three. They basically say that, look, we should have been granted a motion for summary judgment. This should never have made it to trial. But since it did, our motion to strike at the

Starting point is 00:06:00 end of Amber Hurd's case should have been granted. They're just basically saying her case is without basis. And one of the things that they're arguing is the fact that Adam Waldman, as Johnny Depp's attorney, is actually an independent contractor and not his agent. And I find that kind of difficult to because when somebody is speaking on your behalf as your lawyer, they kind of are your agent. Am I wrong there? No, you're not wrong, Anjanet. And this is actually an issue that lawyers in other states as well should really pay attention to whatever the ruling of the Court of Appeals will be here. And that is because as lawyers, we're automatically the agent of our clients. The issue becomes with Johnny Depp's case is to what extent, Is your lawyer statement whenever that is made, if it's relating, mentioning your client's name, if it's related to your client, becomes imputed to the client. Here, Adam Waldman made that statement with the Daily Mail.

Starting point is 00:07:03 Does that mean it's his own independent opinion, or was that an opinion based as an agent of Johnny Depp? And here, Johnny Depp's assignment of errors is going to be arguing in. in his opening brief, that is due on November 2nd, by the way, he will plan to argue that Adam Wellesman was actually an independent contractor and not a lawyer's last agent of him when Adam Waldman made those statements. So that's critical. That's huge. And I think one of the things that's interesting in the assignment of errors, too, is that they're saying that Adam Waldman is a non-party, meaning he wasn't sued as part of this law. lawsuit, right? And they're saying basically his statements are not actionable enough to support a

Starting point is 00:07:55 claim of defamation and that he didn't act with actual malice. I find that interesting because Adam Waldman talked about how he had interviewed, I think, either nine or 11 people who would have been around at this point in time surrounding this May 21st incident at the penthouse. And it sounded like he was saying, look, I did my due diligence before I made these statements. I believe she made it up. So how does the appeals court look at that? Because there's, you know, the deaf team's saying he didn't act with actual malice here. He went and actually interviewed people.

Starting point is 00:08:32 And I think the fact that he was not a party to the counterclaim of Amber Heard is a big issue because in the defamation case, when it involves public figures, as you know, actual malice is required. like you mentioned. So with Adam Waldman, not a party to the case, how is he supposed to prove himself that he did not act in actual malice other than the video deposition that we saw? But as a party, you have more opportunity to actually defend yourself,

Starting point is 00:09:07 but he could not do that. Instead, Johnny Depp had to do that on his behalf because the ruling was Adam Waldman was acting as an agent. of Johnny Depp. I think if Adam Waldman would have been a party as well, it would have been a different story and different evidence, more evidence to support or not support Amber Heard's claim against Adam Waldman's statement. But Amber Heard chose not to sue Adam Waldman. We will never know truly why she did that. I would suspect it's because he is a lawyer of Johnny Debb and there will be a

Starting point is 00:09:48 of attorney-client privilege issues, as we already saw during Adam Waldman's deposition, a lot of questions he did not answer based on attorney-client privilege. Right, and he was instructed not to do so, or advised not to do so by Ben Chu, the attorney for Johnny Depp, who basically would say, you know, I instruct you not to do this, you know, not to answer the question, and Adam Waldman would say, I accept the instruction. So we never got the answer as to whether or not Johnny Depp sanctioned this and said, go do this or what have you, because that was all covered under attorney-client privilege. I think one of the other interesting things here is the fact that the Depp team is claiming

Starting point is 00:10:30 the trial court erred and excluding from evidence the full unredacted version of Mr. Depp's exhibits numbers 881A, B, and C, which are copies of the news articles in which the counterclaim statements appeared. So basically, his team is saying, look, the jury should have been given the entire Daily Mail article to look at this with the full context. I'm assuming they wanted the jury to see everything that was written in that piece. Exactly. And before I answer that question, let me go back to the attorney-client privilege objections that were raised at Adam Walzeron's deposition. I think Ben-chu was correct in asserting those objections there.

Starting point is 00:11:11 Otherwise, it would have been waived, and that would have been very great. for Johnny Depp's case to waive that privilege. At the same time, though, the question is if you're going to assert the attorney-client privilege, so you're saying he was saying that as an agent of Johnny Depp as a lawyer or as an independent contractor, maybe that's one of the issues that the Court of Appeals will have to resolve. In terms of your question about the other assignment of error where Johnny Depp wanted the entire article of the Daily Mail to be included as evidence and presented to the jury.

Starting point is 00:11:49 I quite agree with that assignment of error by Jonizab because I think it's important to see the entire article and not just the redacted portions where the three statements at issue that Amber Hurd indicated in her counterclaim is. Because sometimes this paragraph that is at issue might be explained further, but the paragraph before it or the paragraph under it might have more context of what was said. But the jury won't have that opportunity to evaluate the entirety or the context of what Adam Wellman said if only the actual sentences are shown to them. So I was actually quite surprised that Judge Hasparati did not allow the entire article to be put in front

Starting point is 00:12:39 of the jury because we saw the entire article of Amber Hurd put in front of the jury. Right, the op-ed. They saw the entire thing. Well, Catherine Lozardo, plaintiff's attorney out of Texas, thanks as always for making time for us. We appreciate it. Thank you for having me. And that's it for this edition of Law and Crime Sidebar podcast. It is produced by Sam Goldberg, Michael Dininger, and Logan Harris. Bobby Zoki is our YouTube manager. Alyssa Fisher handles our bookings and Kiera Bronson does our social media. You can listen to and download Sidebar on Apple, Spotify, Google, and wherever else you get your podcast. And of course, as always, you can watch it on Law and Crimes YouTube channel. I'm Ann Janette Levy, and we will see you next time.

Starting point is 00:13:27 You can binge all episodes of this law and crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Spotify.

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Law&Crime Sidebar - Johnny Depp Pushes to Reverse $2M Verdict in Favor of Amber Heard

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