Amber Heard and Johnny Depp have agreed a settlement in their defamation dispute.
The former couple were embroiled in a six-week trial earlier this year over an op-ed the ‘Aquaman’ star wrote in 2018 about being a victim of domestic violence, with the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ star ultimately winning over $10 million in damages after winning all three of his defamation claims and his ex-wife awarded $2 million after winning one of her three countersuit claims.
And now the pair’s lawyers have agreed a deal which will see the 36-year-old actress’ insurance company pay $1 million to her ex-husband to end the case.
But in a statement, Amber – who sold her Los Angeles home to fund her legal action – admitted she has “lost faith in the American legal system” and claimed the 59-year-old actor had won because of a vote “for popularity and power over reason and due process”.
She said in a statement shared to Instagram: “After a great deal of deliberation I have made a very difficult decision to settle the defamation case brought against me by my ex-husband in Virginia.
“It’s important for me to say that I never chose this. I defended my truth and in doing so my life as I knew it was destroyed.
“The vilification I have faced on social media is an amplified version of the ways in which women are re-victimised when they come forward. Now I finally have an opportunity to emancipate myself from something I attempted to leave over six years ago and on terms I can agree to. I have made no admission.
“This is not an act of concession. There are no restrictions or gags with respect to my voice moving forward.
“I make this decision having lost faith in the American legal system, where my unprotected testimony served as entertainment and social media fodder.”
Amber contrasted her experiences to the legal situation in the UK, when Johnny lost a libel case against The Sun newspaper after they branded him a “wife-beater”.
She continued: “When I stood before a judge in the UK, I was vindicated by a robust, impartial and fair system, where I was protected from having to give the worst moments of my testimony in front of the world’s media, and where the court found that I was subjected to domestic and sexual violence.
“In the US, however, I exhausted almost all my resources in advance of and during a trial in which I was subjected to a courtroom that in which abundant, direct evidence that corroborated my testimony was excluded and in which popularity and power mattered more than reason and due process. In the interim I was exposed to a type of humiliation that I simply cannot re-live.”
Amber would rather focus on other issues than go through another appeal in the case.
