Johnny Depp’s suit against Amber Heard to proceed despite UK ruling

Johnny Depp and ex-wife Amber Heard

Despite a devastating legal loss in the United Kingdom, Hollywood actor Johnny Depp will get a second libel trial to try to show that he didn't physically abuse his ex-wife Amber Heard. As per reports, Depp, 58, has been allowed to move forward with his defamation lawsuit against Heard. The actor is suing his ex-wife over a 2018 Washington Post op-ed where Heard wrote about surviving domestic violence. Heard never named Depp in the op-ed, but she did accuse the actor of domestic violence amid their 2016 split, which he denied.

In court documents, a Virginia judge granted the actor the right to pursue his lawsuit, denying Heard's supplemental plea to dismiss the case after Depp lost his UK libel lawsuit against British tabloid The Sun.

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In November 2020, the Pirates of the Caribbean star lost his case against the British tabloid which called him a ‘wife-beater'. The court upheld the outlet's claims as being "substantially true".

Heard's plea to dismiss Depp's lawsuit, filed in Virginia in March 2019, came as the actor argued the UK judgment should hold sway on the proceedings in the US since both lawsuits centre on allegations of the actor as an abuser. Instead, Fairfax County Chief Judge Penney Azcarate rejected Heard's plea, saying while the actor's op-ed and The Sun's article may be similar in that they related to claims of abuse, the statements made by the tabloid and Heard in her op-ed were "inherently different".

In her December 2018 op-ed, Heard wrote, "I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture's wrath for women who speak out." Three months after it was published, Depp filed a defamation lawsuit against the actor for USD 50 million.

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