Amber Heard Settles Defamation Case With Johnny Depp For $1 Million

FAIRFAX, VA — Amber Heard settled a defamation case filed against her by ex-husband Johnny Depp, and said she's lost faith in the U.S. legal system, reports said Monday.

TMZ reported Heard settled for $1 million.

Heard and Depp battled in a Fairfax courtroom this summer. A jury on June 1 reached a decision on both Depp's $50 million defamation lawsuit against Heard and her $100 million counterclaim.

The jury found that Depp had proved all three of his defamation claims against Heard and awarded him with a total $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages. The latter number was reduced to $350,000 by Circuit Court Judge Penney Azcarate, the highest amount that can be awarded according to Virginia guidelines.

The jury found that Heard had proved two of her defamation claims against Depp, but she was awarded $2 million in compensatory damages.

“I make this decision having lost faith in the American legal system, where my unprotected testimony served as entertainment and social media fodder,” Heard wrote on Instagram Monday morning.

"It's important for me to say that I never chose this. I defended my truth and in doing so my life as I knew it was destroyed," Heard also wrote. "The vilification I have faced on social media is an amplified version of the ways in which women are revictimized when they come forward. Now I finally have an opportunity to emancipate myself from something I attempted to leave over six years ago."

Depp's attorneys, Camille Vasquez and Benjamin Chew, told TMZ the lawsuit was not about the money.

"The jury's unanimous decision and the judgment in his favor against Ms. Heard remain fully in place, and the payment of $1M — which Mr. Depp is pledging and will donate to charities — reinforces Ms. Heard's acknowledgment of the conclusion of the legal system's rigorous pursuit for justice."

Heard had appealed the June verdict, which favored Depp while still finding that the actors defamed one another.

In her statement, Heard said she was “vindicated by a robust, impartial and fair system” in the United Kingdom, where Depp in 2020 lost a libel case against the publisher of the Sun, a British tabloid that called him a “wife beater” in reference to Heard, The Washington Post reported.

In the United States, she said, “I was subjected to a courtroom in which abundant, direct evidence that corroborated my testimony was excluded and in which popularity and power mattered more than reason and due process.”

To continue the court fight, Heard said she faced "an impossible bill," not only financially, but emotionally and psychologically.

By settling the lawsuit, Heard wrote, “I am also choosing the freedom to dedicate my time to the work that helped me heal after my divorce; work that exists in realms in which I feel seen, heard and believed, and in which I know I can effect change.”

For six weeks, the Fairfax jury heard testimony in which Heard said she had suffered abuse at the hands of her ex-husband, citing more than a dozen instances where she said Depp assaulted her, according to the Associated Press.

In court, Depp denied the accusations of physical and sexual abuse, saying that Heard came up with claims in order to destroy his reputation, AP reported.

Heard reacted to the verdict in a statement provided to ABC News, saying the disappointment she felt was "beyond words."

"I'm even more disappointed with what this verdict means for other women," Heard said in the statement. "It is a setback. It sets back the clock to a time when a woman who spoke up and spoke out could be publicly shamed and humiliated."

Depp's libel suit stemmed from a 2018 Washington Post op-ed in which Heard characterized herself as "a public figure representing domestic abuse." Even though the article did not mention Depp by name, his lawyers have claimed that it cost him his lucrative film career including the highly successful "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise, according to the AP.

Depp filed the defamation lawsuit against Heard in Virginia because the Washington Post's online editions are published through computer servers in Fairfax County.

Depp's lawyers also chose to file the case in Virginia because the state's anti-SLAPP law — or Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation — is more relaxed than the one in California, InsideNoVa reported. Anti-SLAPP laws prevent people from using courts, and potential threats of lawsuits, to intimidate others from exercising their First Amendment rights.

Related:

• Johnny Depp Trial: After Verdict Is Read, Normalcy Begins To Return
• 'Save A Life': Amber Heard Fans Travel To Show Support In Depp Trial

A spokesperson for Depp also provided a statement to Fox News, in which the actor said the jury "gave him his life back."

"From the very beginning, the goal of bringing this case was to reveal the truth, regardless of the outcome," Depp's statement read. "Speaking the truth was something that I owed my children and to all those who have remained steadfast in their support of me."

Christina Taft, a Los Angeles data scientist, was one of a handful of Heard supporters who showed up outside the Fairfax County Courthouse during six-week-long the trial. Taft hoped that Heard would appeal the decision.

"We just want to save her life and this is abuse of process," she said, in a text following the verdict. "Amber was forcefully isolated yet JD’s lawyers were talking to people the entire time."

Throughout the defamation trial, supporters from across the country regularly showed up outside the Fairfax County Courthouse, hoping to get a glimpse of the two celebrities on their way to and from court.

There are a number of resources available to victims of domestic abuse in Virginia. The National Domestic Violence Hotline can be found at 1-800-799-7233. Virginia's family violence hotline can be reached at 1-800-838-8238.