Johnny Depp allowed to proceed with $50 mn defamation case against ex wife Amber Heard

Johnny Depp has been allowed to pursue his $ 50 million defamation case against former wife actress Amber Heard. Judge Bruce D White refused to dismiss Depp’s lawsuit regarding Heard’s 2018 The Washington Post op-ed, reports Variety. In the piece, she had written about the aftermath of accusing Depp of domestic violence, though she did not identify him by name. The Aquaman actress, wrote that she “felt the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out”. Judge White said that Depp can go forward with this case with the presumption that Heard’s statements in the op-ed implied that Depp had assaulted her. [caption id=“attachment_6441721” align=“alignnone” width=“936”] Amber Heard and Johnny Depp. Image from Twitter[/caption] “Plaintiff has pleaded circumstances that would reasonably cause three of the four statements at issue to convey the alleged defamatory meaning that Mr. Depp abused Ms. Heard, and this alleged meaning is in fact defamatory,” said White. The defamation suit was filed by Depp in March 2019 after he objected to the headline of the op-ed piece and the tabloid headlines that portrayed him as “a domestic abuser”, which is “categorically false,” according to Yahoo News. The headline read: “Amber Heard: I spoke up against sexual violence — and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change.” Depp and Heard met on the sets of The Rum Diary in 2011. They married in February 2015 and separated in May 2016. It was reported that Heard had obtained a  restraining order  against Depp after accusing the actor of verbal, emotional and physical abuse.  Photos of the actress with a battered face had also surfaced. She had reportedly admitted to 'hitting' Depp in an audio tape that revealed conversations between the ex-couple in 2015. In the audiotape, exclusively obtained by  Daily Mail, Heard – who filed for divorce in May 2016 accusing Depp of beating her during their 18-month marriage – can be heard warning the latter about her violent behaviour.