Amber Heard’s lawyers have made another request for a retrial of her defamation case with Johnny Depp.
In documents filed Friday, the actress’s legal team said that one of the people originally summoned to serve as a juror in the trial had not appeared and had been replaced by someone else.
The documents, reported by the PA news agency, read: “Juror n. 15 was not the individual called to be part of the jury on 11 April 2022, and therefore was not part of the jury and could not have been part of the jury adequately to this test.
“As the court no doubt agrees, it is deeply troubling for an individual not summoned to the position of jury nevertheless to appear for the position of jury and serve on a jury, especially in a case like this.
“This was a high-profile case, where the fact and date of the jury trial were widely publicized before and after the jury summons was issued.”
The attorneys added that Ms. Heard had the right “to rely on basic protection … that the jurors in this trial would have been individuals who had actually been summoned for the position of jury.”
“Ms. Heard’s due process was therefore compromised,” the documents said.
“In these circumstances, the trial should be declared void and a retrial ordered.”
Read more:
Depp v Heard: The key evidence of a six-week trial for “soap opera”.
The news comes a few days after Heard’s lawyers made another call for a retrialarguing that the original ruling was not supported by evidence.
Depp is suing Heard, her former partner, for a 2018 article she wrote for the Washington Post about her experiences as a domestic abuse survivor, which her lawyers alleged falsely accused him of being a harasser.
Depp denied abusing Heard and told jurors his ex-wife’s domestic violence allegations were “dire and disturbing.”
Heard insisted that her article was not about her ex-husband, but about the “broader cultural conversation” surrounding the #MeToo movement at the time.
After six weeks of testimony, the court case ended on June 1, with the jury finding that the article it was defamatory of Deppwhich was awarded $ 10.35 million (£ 8.2 million) in damages.
Read more:
Depp v Heard: How Did Amber Heard’s Online Abuse Become Acceptable?
Heard won on a tally of her counter-lawsuit, successfully claiming that one of Depp’s lawyers defamed her claiming her allegations were “an abuse hoax” aimed at capitalizing on the #MeToo movement.
The jury awarded her $ 2 million (£ 1.5 million) in damages.
