Johnny Depp Granted Permission To Pursue Libel Suit Against Ex-Wife Amber Heard

A Virginia judge has granted Johnny Depp permission to get a second libel trial to prove he did not physically abuse his ex-wife Amber Heard. The ruling comes following Heard’s plea to dismiss her ex-husband’s lawsuit after he had lost his U.K. libel case against The Sun for publishing an article calling him a “wife-beater.”

The “Pirates of the Caribbean” actor is suing Heard over writing about surviving domestic violence in a December 2018 Washington Post column. “I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out,” she wrote.

While the actress did not name Depp in the op-ed, she did accuse him of domestic violence amid their split in 2016, which he vehemently denied.

In November 2020, Depp lost his case against The Sun after the court upheld the tabloid’s claims as being “substantially true.” The ruling, which Depp was not able to overturn on appeal, left him in the position of arguing he did not get everything he wanted in the country, which has long been infamous for libel tourism.

In turn, Heard sought to dismiss Depp’s lawsuit, arguing the Virginia court should recognize the U.K. judgment since both lawsuits were centered on allegations of Depp being an abuser. The suit in Virginia should have made it to trial first, but Depp’s U.K. case got the honor due to delays.

On Tuesday, Fairfax County Chief Judge Penney Azcarate rejected Heard’s motion due to lack of privity. The judge ruled that while the actress’s interests were aligned with the British tabloid in question, those interests were not identical.

The Sun’s interests were based on whether the statements the newspaper published were false,” wrote Azcarate in the court documents. “Heard’s interests relate to whether the statements she published were false,” read the document.

The judge added that Heard was not a party in the U.K. case and therefore, not subject to the same discovery rules.

“In fact, Defendant could not have been a named defendant to the U.K. litigation because her allegedly defamatory statements were made after the U.K. action commenced,” explained Azcarate.