Amber Heard has filed an appeal to the Virginia courts months after a judge ruled against her in favour of her ex-husband Johnny Depp.
The high profile million dollar case resulted in Depp, 56, being awarded $10.35million in a verdict delivered after his legal team successfully argued that Heard's Washington Post op-ed, i n which she accused her ex-husband, of domestic abuse, was defamatory.
Heard, 36, and her legal team argued the exclusion of some of her therapy notes by Virginia Judge Penney Azcarate, in which she reported being abused by Depp, resulted in an unfair trial.
But now, Heard's attorney's have filed a 68-page document dated to late November, pursuing either a reversal of the decision or a re-trial due to the jury being 'improperly prevented' from 'considering several instances in which Heard reported Depp's abuse to a medical professional'.
The papers submitted to the court Heard argue, through her legal team, that by not pursuing her case it would make it more difficult for others to trust medical record of reported alleged domestic abuse to come forward in the future.
The report reads: ''If not reversed, the trial court’s exclusion of contemporaneous reports of domestic abuse to medical professionals will make it more difficult for other abuse victims to prove allegations of abuse, and likely deter them from coming forward,'' they continued.
''That holding, if allowed to stand, undoubtedly will have a chilling effect on other women who wish to speak about abuse involving powerful men.''
Her legal team also put forward the argument that the location of the trial in Fairfax, Virginia — the Washington Post's server location —was an 'entirely inconvenient forum with no connection to Depp or any meaningful connection to his claims, and argue 'it should have taken place in California, where the couple once lived.
Depp's legal team also filed an appeal last month claiming that the singular count of defamation against Heard for which he was upheld should be overturned.
The actor's team, led by lawyer Benjamin Chew, added that "although the trial court decided the vast majority of those issues sensibly and correctly" a few of the decisions made were "erroneous".
The documents say Depp should not have to pay up for comments made by his attorney which led to Heard's successful counterclaim.
His attorneys wrote in their filing: ''The jury’s emphatic favourable verdict on all three defamatory statements alleged in his complaint fully vindicated Mr. Depp and restored his reputation."
Both appeal requests will now be ruled on by a group of judges and if pursued by either party could be heard at the state's Supreme Court.
