Why Johnny Depp Won Defamation Case In US But Lost It In The UK?

A legal expert shares one simple reason why Johhny Depp lost his libel case in the UK but won the defamation case in the US.

Back in 2020, Depp lost a libel case against The Sun newspaper which called him a 'wife beater'.

Yesterday Depp won the major defamation trial against his ex-wife, Amber Heard, after the jury found that Heard did, in fact, defame him in her 2018 Washington Post op-ed.

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The case is one of the most high-profile A-List cases that will be remembered for years for being so complicated, it all began when the Aquaman actor posted an online article in the Washington Post titled: “I spoke up against sexual violence – and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change.”

Even though the article did not explicitly mention Depp's name but it was obvious that it was directed toward the actor. 

Heard has now been ordered to pay her ex-husband $15 million in charges.

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However, according to George Freeman, executive director of the Media Law Resource Center, there's one simple reason why Depp won in the US and not the UK, reports Washington Post.

Freeman said: "The answer is simple," while adding, "It was up to the jury."

In terms of the strategy used to convince the jury, Mark Stephens, an international media lawyer, went on to say that Depp’s legal team in the United States ran a strategy known as DARVO, an acronym for deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender, in which Depp became the victim and Heard the abuser.

"We find that DARVO works very well with juries but almost never works with judges, who are trained to look at evidence," Stephens said.

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He explained: "That didn’t impact the outcome because essentially what you have got is a jury believing evidence that a British judge did not accept, so that’s where the difference lies here.

"Unusually, not in the different legal frameworks."

Lee Berlik, a Virginia-based attorney who specializes in defamation law and business litigation, said: "If Depp had filed that same case here in the US, he would have the burden of persuading the jury that the accusation was false."

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He added: "It is remarkable that a judge in the UK found that the Sun had proven 12 separate acts of ‘wife beating’ by Depp, but in Virginia a jury essentially found zero acts of domestic abuse and that Ms. Heard’s claims to the contrary were basically a 'hoax'."

Elaine Bredehoft, Heard's lawyer, said: "They have said she has this whole hoax... but what would Amber Heard's motive be for creating a hoax or creating any of this or making any of this up?"

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