On Wednesday, Johnny Depp won his defamation trial against Amber Heard in an unsettling but unsurprising result, given the atmosphere around the suit. The legal proceedings were inescapable, whether you wanted to pay attention or not: the weeks-long, publicly streamed carnival of salaciousness seemed skewed towards Depp from the start, turning the idea of a fair trial in the age of social media into somewhat of a farce. Because of this, Amber Heard wants to appeal the jury’s decision in favor of her ex, and her attorney claims that she has excellent grounds for it.
Heard’s attorney, Elaine Bredehoft, appeared on The Today Show Thursday morning. In an interview with Savannah Guthrie, Bredehoft blamed the loss partly on decisions on evidence allowed in the trial and the influence of social media, leading to the jury finding in favor of Depp and awarding him $15 million in damages. The judge reduced that to about $10.4 million, and Amber Heard herself was awarded $2 million as a result of her counterclaim.
