Unsealed Johnny Depp Vs Amber Heard Court Documents Shed New Light On Defamation Trial

Johnny Depp and Amber Heard's defamation trial has now received renewed attention following the unsealing of more than 6,000 pages of court documents from the former couple's legal battle. 

Mr Depp had filed a $50 million lawsuit against his ex-wife in response to a 2018 op-ed that she wrote for The Washington Post, in which she stated that she was a domestic abuse survivor. On June 1, after 61 hours of testimony from each side, the jury ruled that Ms Heard had in fact defamed Mr Depp and awarded him over $10 million in damages. Ms Heard, on the other hand, was granted $2 million. 

Now, with both sides appealing the verdicts against them, unsealed documents have shed new light on the trial. According to Daily Beast, in the pre-trial court documents, Ms Heard's team argued to the judge that evidence number of "irrelevant personal matters" should be excluded from the defamation trial. 

They alleged, "Mr. Depp inappropriately seeks to introduce evidence of the following Irrelevant Personal Matters: (1) nude pictures of Amber Heard; (2) Amber Heard's sister Whitney's reality show video; (3) Whitney and Amber's past romantic relationships; (4) Amber's brief stint as an exotic dancer years before she met Mr. Depp and Mr. Depp attempting to frivolously and maliciously suggest or imply that Ms. Heard was at one time an escort," as quoted by the outlet. 

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Separately, Newsweek reported that the documents also highlighted one of the trial's more memorable talking points - Mr Depp's severed finger. In April, the Pirates of the Caribbean actor claimed that Ms Heard threw a large bottle of vodka at him during a fight at a house they were staying at in Australia in 2015, causing the tip of his finger to be cut off. 

In the unsealed documents, a transcript of a deposition from Jennifer Howell, a former friend and boss of Ms Heard's sister Whitney Henriquez, shows her recollection of the alleged incident. 

Howell had told Mr Depp's attorney Camille Vasquez, "I was sitting exactly where I'm sitting right now because I'm sitting at my desk in the office. So I was sitting right here on my computer, working, in my zone, responding, doing whatever I was doing. And right over there, there were two black-and-white chairs at the time with a table in between it. Whitney was sitting in one of the black-and-white chairs." 

"There's a door that goes out right over there as well, and she just screamed, 'She's done it now. She's cut off his God damn finger,' and made this huge proclamation. And I pushed my chair back. I was like, 'What?'

"And she goes, 'She cut off his finger. She cut off his finger.' And then she bolted out the door and was like, 'I got to call somebody. I got to call somebody.' And she went out the door and she called someone. I don't know who she called. That's what was said," Ms Howell added, as per the outlet.

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The unsealed documents reportedly showed that Mr Depp's team had opposed a mental examination of the Hollywood actor ahead of the trial because Mr Depp wasn't alleging harm based on a specific physical or mental injury. During the trial as well, Mr Depp had testified that he "lied" to a medical professional about what had happened to his finger.

He had stated that he told the doctor that he had smashed his finger in a large accordion door. He told the jury that he didn't want to get his ex-wife in trouble. "I did not want to put her name in that mix," he said. 

Notably, Mr Depp previously filed a libel lawsuit against The Sun in the UK after the publication called the actor a wife-beater. He lost that case. Separately, he faces a lawsuit in Los Angeles by a location manager for a movie, who claims the actor had punched him.