Johnny Depp’s attorneys sat down for interviews on Wednesday on Today and Good Morning America, as they talked about the actor’s victory in his defamation trial last week over ex-wife Amber Heard.
While Heard’s attorney has called the verdict a setback for the MeToo era, Depp’s attorney Camille Vasquez doesn’t think it will have an impact.
“We’re here to talk about the case that we tried, right? We encourage all victims to come forward, have their day in court, which is exactly what happened in this case,” she said in an interview with Today co-host Savannah Guthrie.
The jury awarded Depp $15 million in compensatory and punitive damages after it found that Heard was liable for defamation when she authored a 2018 Washington Post op ed in which she identified herself as “a public figure representing domestic abuse.” The judge in the case, Penney Azcarate, quickly reduced the amount of punitive damages to the maximum $350,000 allowed in Virginia.
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In a sign of how much import news media outlets are placing on the case, which has drawn huge online and social media interest, Vasquez and Chew were interviewed by both morning news shows that ran just about at the same time, with GMA’s sitdown with George Stephanopoulos getting a start at 7:31 AM ET, and the sitdown with Today’s Guthrie starting at 7:34 AM ET.
Guthrie’s interview was live, and she also asked Vasquez and Chew whether they feel confident if the verdict, as expected, gets appealed by Heard. Her attorney Elaine Bredehoft, interviewed by Guthrie last week, indicated that is likely.
“We feel very confident that there are no errors that would justify any kind of successful appeal,” Chew said.
The jury also awarded Heard $2 million in compensatory damages in her countersuit, but no punitive damages. The jury sided with Heard in one of her claims, that Depp’s attorney falsely contended that she and her friends staged the couple’s downtown Los Angeles penthouse to make it look like it was trashed when police arrived.
But Vasquez said that the verdict in Depp’s case was “overwhelmingly positive” and “it was unanimous. There were seven people that decided he was defamed.”
Chew also criticized Bredehoft for comments she made last week, in which she said that the jury was not allowed to see and hear evidence, such as therapists’ notes, that would have bolstered Heard’s claims.