On a related note, it’s being reported that Ms. Heard does not have all that much money, and in particular, not enough to pay the judgment against her. (It’s also being reported that in order to apeal she needs to post bond for the judgment, but I’m not sure how consistent that is with the statement by her attorney that she would be appealing.)
What I’m wondering is if this gives an opportunity for a settlement in which Heard publically retracts all her claims against Depp (claiming she was traumatized by all sorts of other things which led to these claims, or some other excuse) in exchange for which Depp waives the settlement money. Because Depp doesn’t need the money, he needs his reputation, so this might be a win-win.
What does Depp have to gain from this? The jury have already said she’s lying, any retraction from her adds nothing, especially if it’s a retraction that denies or minimizes wrongdoing. You negotiate settlement before trial, why would Depp settle after he’s won? The only incentive would be if her appeal has a good chance of succeeding.
Settlement after a verdict is very common…probably the norm. But this is an individual (not a company).
It’s important to remember that having a Judgment for $10million does not mean you get $10million. It means you’re entitled to start collecting it. If someone does not have that kind of money, they are generally referred to as Judgment proof. You can’t enforce the judgment (e.g., you cannot force the sale of their house, their car, other specific items), or if you can force the sale, it’s not worth that much. If someone doesn’t just pay up, then there is really a whole other trial after a verdict to collect on the Judgment.
Every state is different. OJ moved to Florida after the $10million (?) verdict against him and ended up paying nothing. Florida is debtor friendly (lots of things are protected from a judgment). I’m not sure about Virginia or where/how you’d enforce the judgment out of state.
This is why you might settle, even if there is no appeal. However, I’m not sure Depp cares and it might be a bad look to force a collection (sending the police to seize her assets).
Post-trial settlement is incredibly common in civil litigation because you can have appeals going for literally years in some cases, often times the victorious party would prefer to get some money and be done with the case.
If anyone remembers the sordid Hulk Hogan lawsuit against Gawker, Hogan ultimately won a $140m judgement. The owner of Gawker and Gawker itself both basically immediately entered bankruptcy and said they could not pay. Despite having a fat jury award, Hogan ended up settling for $31m. That $31m was a lot more useful to him than a theoretical $140m he was likely to never get, and while he may have gotten more than $31m had he pursued it for another 5 years, he would be 5 years older and likely still wouldn’t have gotten even half of the $140m judgement.
OJ was in a very different place than Heard is now. He was widely reviled as a guy who knifed two people to death, and his big earning days were gone forever. So he needed to protect what he had accumulated (I believe in the form of house and pension, primarily), and FL bankruptcy laws were the way to go.
But whatever Heard has done, she’s not OJ. She’s very unpopular right now, but the public is fickle and it’s possible that she could one day put it behind her and go back to making big bucks as a movie star again. So it might be in her interest to back off the whole thing, keep all or most of the judgment money, and try to regain some popularity and score some big roles.
Is there a concept of double jeopardy in libel law? If Heard came out today and again claimed Depp had abused her, could he sue her again and get another $15 million judgment? Or would it be considered enough that the courts had adjudged her a liar once?
You can appeal without posting a bond, but the plaintiff can start collection efforts once the judgment is entered. So, you’re not getting the same benefit of appealing.
I haven’t followed this trial nearly enough to have an informed opinion about the merits of any appeal, but “we don’t like what the jury did” won’t get you very far. They would have to identify errors by the trial judge that precluded a fair trial. It happens, but it’s difficult to overturn a jury verdict on appeal.
Could they suggest the jury has been prejudiced by the massive amount of publicity the trial has generated? Which would be a clever way to disrupt a trial if you had enough money, really.
And rightly so. Women can lie too. This “always believe women” concept is a dangerous slippery slope. People do make false accusations as well and should be held accountable when they do. How about always investigate and find out the truth.
I’m disappointed that a number of posters here seem to be buying into the false narrative that the #MeToo movement has compromised the justice system, and that all men are at risk of losing their livelihoods or even their freedom through false accusation without any presumption of innocence.
Many abusive situations are he said / she said, there are rarely independent witnesses or unambiguous physical evidence, so individual instances of abuse will usually be difficult to prove to the reasonable doubt standard. That’s why abusers have so often got away with it, and why abuse is so widespread. The “believe women” slogan does not mean that we should completely abandon our critical faculties. It means listen, and take accusations seriously. It’s critically important to do this, because all of the abusers who have been exposed in the #MeToo movement have been the result of multiple credible accusations. Motivated by a brave first accuser coming forward, numerous victims often come forward with similar stories. The accumulation of multiple allegations, credible and consistent, can exceed the threshold of reasonable doubt even when isolated instances are difficult to prove.
I cannot recall any instance of an abuser exposed in recent years in the #MeToo movement who was condemned on the basis of a single unsupported accusation. And it’s paradoxical that the Heard/Depp saga is being spun as proof of how men are suffering from false accusations, when it’s a high profile example of the exact opposite - a single accuser, unsupported by corroborating allegations from other victims, getting her comeuppance and exposed as a liar.
It would be a horribly regressive step to discourage victims from coming forward by treating initial accusations with greater skepticism. It’s important the first allegations are heard and taken seriously, because that’s the only way to encourage other victims to come forward to corroborate. Publicizing initial allegations without definitive proof does create the potential for harm in rare cases of false accusation, but that limited and temporary harm must be weighed against the far greater harm of so many serial abusers just continuing to get away with it. As I said earlier in this thread, Blackstone’s ratio sounds far less noble when you consider the 100 victims of the 10 guilty men who go free.
I agree. The lesson people should learn from this trial is that men are able to defend themselves successfully against false accusations of sexual harassment.
And this is different from what happens now and in what way?
You seem to be under the impression that the SOP is always believe the accuser, yet this rarely happens in real life.
The norm is that false accusations are still vastly outnumbered by true ones and unreported ones. And we wouldn’t know they were false to begin with unless there had been investigation. So this seems to be complaint that we should stop doing what we’re already doing and go back to doing what we’re already doing. If so, great! We’re already doing that, so you should be happy.
Depp was punished over the single unsupported accusation. That is literally the entire point. Just because the truth has come out now does not mean he has not suffered.
The ‘truth’ that came out was not a finding of fact about abuse but whether or not the jury was sufficiently convinced about defamation.
This was a civil trial about defamation, not abuse.
And, to be honest, neither came out of this looking especially good. They were likely mutually abusive. To what extent each was abusive, who knows? But that wasn’t the point of the trial anyway, except to the extent it contributed (or not) to the defamation claims.
It wasn’t a single accusation, it was like 12–and some of them are backed up by photographic evidence going back years.
I’m sorry, but while there is certainly not enough evidence to convict Depp in a criminal court, I can see no neutral analysis perspective where we can just confidently conclude every allegation against Depp was false. Abusive, bad people in an abusive, bad relationship, that at least on Depp’s part also included heavy drug use, do bad things–both of them, trying to sort through that is intrinsically messy (and not something we should “take sides” on.) But I find the desire to take inconsistencies about Heard’s behavior and general evidence she is also a shitty person, as an exoneration of Depp…concerning to say the least. I’ve seen very little truly exonerating for Depp, and lots of reasons to think he was just as abusive and terrible in this relationship as she was.
Threads like this that remind me why I stopped interacting with this board…you people have completely gone off the deep end of the social justice pool…
Why all of the hate against Amber Heard? Because it’s cathartic to watch a lying asshole get their comeuppance. Gender doesn’t factor in for most folks. Integrity does.