Amber Heard’s legal team pushed to dismiss the Johnny Depp trial

Johnny Depp is suing his ex-wife Amber Heard for $50 million for defamation after she published an article speaking out against domestic violence back in 2018. On the 12th day of the trial (May 3), Amber Heard’s legal team tried to have the case dismissed… The same week she is supposed to take the stand for her testimony.

A motion to dismiss the case

Amber Heard’s legal team has made a bold move, days after Heard herself made the decision to fire her PR team after a week’s worth of ‘bad headlines’. Heard’s lawyer Benjamin Rotternborn has said that if the court agrees that Johnny Depp abused Heard ‘even one time, she wins - it’s that simple’.

The basis of Heard’s legal team to dismiss the case is that Depp’s defamation claim should be stricken from records because Depp has failed to establish a ‘falsity of statement’ during his case in chief.

Rotternborn has also argued that the title of the article written by Heard and published in The Washington Post, 'I spoke up against sexual violence - and faced our culture's wrath. That has to change,' cannot be used as it wasn’t Heard who wrote the title.

He has also claimed that Depp hasn’t proved that Heard acted with ‘actual malice’ in writing the article, which is needed for a defamation case.

The motion was overruled

This isn’t the first time that the judge has decided to continue with the trial. Indeed before the case began, Amber Heard’s lawyer asked that the trial be dismissed, claiming that Johnny Depp had not proven his claim.

Judge Penney Azcarate denied both requests because there was a ‘scintilla’ of evidence a jury may find that they were defamatory. The request to dismiss the case led to a heated exchange between Depp and Heard’s lawyers, with both strongly making their arguments.

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