Johnny Depp won his blatant defamation case against ex-wife Amber Heard after a jury ultimately didn’t believe she was telling the truth — especially under cross-examination, legal experts told The Post on Wednesday.
“The case was going to rise and fall on its credibility more than any finer legal question. And he didn’t make it through the trial while retaining his credibility,” said former California Judge Haleem Dhanidina.
“The fact that she emerged from cross-examination, defeated without any remaining credibility – that was the linchpin in my case,” he said.
Dhanidina, who is also currently a Los Angeles criminal defense attorney, said jurors may have thought the 36-year-old actress was lying about the abuse she claimed to have suffered at the hands of 58-year-old “Pirates of the Caribbean”. did. Star.
The jury eventually thought, “She was lying”. [Depp] Intentionally because he had a bone to pick. And that, to me, is the takeaway of this lawsuit,” Dhanidina said.
Beverly Hills Entertainment Attorney Mitra Ahorian said the “Aquaman” actress also struck the jury as insidious on the stands.
“The jury found him either unprofessional, overacting, or not worthy of sympathy,” said Ahoren, whose clients include actors, directors and writers.
“Heard’s emotional cues at the witness stand were not consistent with her testimony. She would get very emotional at strange times or make strange attempts to connect with the jury by talking directly to them,” she said.
Ahurain said it also hurt her case that she failed to keep her story straight during certain points of the trial.
“She was also shrouded in too many discrepancies, which made it difficult to know which parts to believe and which parts to disbelieve. Even though there was some truth in her statements, her own testimony, and in the audio recordings His own words recorded hurt him more than anything else in this trial,” Ahorain said.
“Depp’s lawyers did an incredible job of uncovering this,” she said.
Texas Civil Attorney Katherine Lizardo said the testimony of Depp’s ex-girlfriend, supermodel Kate Moss, was “a nail in the coffin” for Heard.
Moss testified that Depp had never thrown her down a set of stairs, as Heard claimed — injuring Heard’s “credibility,” Lizardo said.
Depp sued Hurd For $50 million on a 2018 op-ed that appeared in The Washington Post. In the article, Heard wrote that she had become a “public figure representing domestic abuse”.
