Amber Heard's Team Will Attempt To Dismiss Johnny Depp's Defamation Case: Report

Amber Heard's lawyers are trying to dismiss Johnny Depp's $50 million defamation case against her.

Heard's legal team is expected to file a motion to dismiss Depp's case against the actress. However, her defense team is also aware that the move will likely get rejected, Deadline reported.

Under the Old Dominion statutes, the lawyers of the defense in civil cases are "required" to enter a motion to strike once the plaintiff has wrapped up their case. Heard's legal team led by Elaine Bredehoft and Ben Rottenborn is likely to make the motion Tuesday before Judge Penny Azcarate to agree with, reject or take under advisement.

Depp is suing his ex-wife for the 2018 op-ed she wrote for the Washington Post about being a domestic abuse survivor. Depp acknowledged that he was not named in the column but said it was clearly about their relationship and him. He also alleged that the "fictitious" claims in the op-ed ruined his career as Disney dropped him as Captain Jack Sparrow in the multi-billion franchise "Pirates of the Caribbean" just four days after it ran.

The trial was challenged by the "Aquaman" star several times in a bid to dismiss it. However, Judge Bruce D. White said in March 2020 that Depp met the requirements to "plead allegations of an implied defamatory meaning, that is in fact defamatory, as well as circumstances that would reasonably cause the statements at issue to convey an alleged defamatory meaning," according to The Hollywood Reporter.

At the time, White noted that editorials and op-eds are usually not actionable because opinions are naturally not defamatory. However, Virginia law provides a cause of action for defamation that "may be made by inference, implication, or insinuation."

Depp also filed a libel suit in the UK against The Sun for calling him a "wife-beater," but he lost the case. The outlet noted that the burden of proof was much higher in the U.S. for Depp than in the UK. However, the two cases were different because Heard was not a party in the lawsuit abroad and only testified for the tabloid.

"This is the same evidence given in the UK case, which he resoundingly lost," an unnamed source close to Heard's camp told Deadline. "So I supposed it’s now just a variation on that old saying ‘If at first, you don’t succeed, lie lie again."

The outlet noted that Depp had said over and over since mid-2019 that he was the victim of domestic abuse when he and Heard were together and not her. The ongoing trial is being televised, and many are convinced that Depp has been telling the truth.

A testimony via video link and live in the court included one from a security guard who saw Heard punch Depp in 2015. The last witness for the plaintiff is a deposition from Heard's former personal nurse on Tuesday morning.

Heard will also take the stand as the second witness for the defense. Previous reports said James Franco and Elon Musk would serve as witnesses for Heard. However, recent reports claimed that both would not appear in the ongoing trial. Last week, the SpaceX CEO's lawyer, Alex Spiro, told E! News that the billionaire would not be testifying.

Heard, for her part, insisted that she was telling the truth. She countersued Depp for $100 million in the summer of 2020.