After a Virginia court found that actress Amber Heard defamed her ex-husband, actor Johnny Depp, in an op-ed she penned about being a victim of domestic abuse in 2018, her lawyer said she couldn't afford to pay the roughly $10 million judgment.
After six weeks, the 'Johnny Depp vs. Amber Heard Trial' came to a close on Thursday. The jury found in Depp's favor, awarding him $15 million in damages.
According to a report in India Today, during the trial, Heard's financial issues were brought to light. Terence Dougherty, an executive for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), for which Heard was an ambassador and who assisted her in writing the op-ed, testified about a $7 million payment Heard made to the organization after her divorce settlement with Depp.
Only $1.3 million of the $3.5 million pledged by the actress to the ACLU has been delivered so far. Heard suspended her payments to the ACLU in 2019 due to "financial difficulties," according to Dougherty.
After being together for a few years, Depp and Heard married in 2015. After Heard accused Depp of physical assault, the two split in 2017. Depp sued Heard in 2018 after she published an op-ed in the Washington Post. In the slander action, she countersued him.
While the jury agreed with Depp in the verdict, it nonetheless found that Depp defamed Heard in the course of defending herself against her allegations. For her counterclaim, the jury awarded Heard $2 million in compensatory damages.
