I started reading the full report from the UK case. Very quickly I ran across evidence considered there that was debunked in the US case. I’m not going to bother reading the rest of it unless a proponent of that decision points out any evidence actually considered in the UK trial that was not readily dismissed by any rational person evaluated the US case. Witnesses whose statement were not cross examined in the UK court count for nothing. Witnesses who would not even show up for the US trial count for nothing. Witnesses whose testimony was categorically rebuked by witnesses who did show up for the US trial count for nothing.
There’s no reason I should bother considering the UK case at all unless someone who claims that it has a just result points out the particular evidence presented there that would indicate Depp was lying and Heard was not.
That’s a reasonable stance if your goal is to take sides and support Jack Sparrow, which appears to be the case. Otherwise it is not a reasonable stance for evaluating evidence to a civil standard. Your use of the term “debunked” and your assertion that a witness not willing or able (or perhaps never called) to appear for two separate trials in two separate venues, which can have any number of legitimate reasons, devalues any probative value of the witness in the venue in which they appeared is silly and nonsensical.
Your entire reply is nonsense. Find the witness that appeared in the UK trial that was not thoroughly discredited in the US trial and I’ll have something to evaluate. I think that fact that you have not done and are looking for excuses not to support your claims shows that such evidence does not exist and your entire reasoning is based on a presupposition of the outcome.
I made absolutely no judgement about this case until I watched the US trial which was quite clear in the result passed on by an honest jury examining real evidence through cross examination and countering witnesses and evidence.
Your use of the term “thoroughly discredited” is egregious. This was a civil case in which both sides said and made arguments to the effect of “the other side is lying” and “the other side’s evidence is not credible.” Making an argument is not the same as proving to a high standard that the argument is true. As is typical in a civil case, there are conflicting claims and arguments made, but there is not any objectively high standard being met simply because Depp’s team had a good rebuttal for a given witness.
The UK judge never asserted that he thought every single piece of evidence, or every witness testimony, was 100% proven, that is not his role. He ruled that based on the totality of the evidence that the newspaper was justified in calling Depp a wife beater. The newspaper does not have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Depp beat his wife to publish those words, it only has to have some basis for believing that it is true.
Frankly, it seems like the jury itself you were easily confused by effective litigators.
So there is no evidence to demonstrate your conclusion. You have chosen to believe the opinion of a judge who did not cross examine witnesses and believed the defendants story without evidence. The US trial is on video, you can watch how under cross examination Heard’s story falls apart. How multiple witnesses and photographic evidence shows she is lying. And while you may believe statements by people not made under oath who did not appear at the trial I do not, and apparently neither did the jury, who was not at all fooled. The UK judge may not have been fooled by anything, he clearly decided Amber Heard was truthful without without any basis other than his opinion and ruled against Depp. I’m sure he’s ashamed of his decision if he watched the US trial.
The UK ruling was whether or not the paper was liable, right? In that sense, does it even matter that Heard was lying? They had her as a source, so they reported in good faith, essentially. As opposed to they made it up out of thin air.
Obviously I’m a layman with no expertise in the law, neither US nor UK, but if the paper’s got a source that they believed, it’s kind of hard to sue them for lying about you even if their source turns out to have been lying.
The remedy in that case would seem be to sue the source who was lying. Thus the US case.
No, I chose to believe a judge who analyzed mountains of evidence, I’m sorry but your opinions about the evidence and his analysis are not remotely on par with the quality of his professional opinion as a judge.
Heard was not a party to the UK litigation, but the court did not find that the Sun published false information due to being lied to by Heard. Instead, the court analyzed something like 500 items of evidence (this includes exhibits, witness statements, witness testimony, documents, affidavits etc etc), a significant portion of this evidence had its origins in Heard–police reports she filed, photos she had taken, testimony of people who had been present at times before or after alleged instances of abuse–and found that to a civil standard, the collective evidence was sufficient proof that Depp had abused Heard.
Importantly this is not the same thing as saying “yes that’s definitely what happened”, or even that it is demonstrated to a degree sufficient to obtain a criminal conviction had it been a criminal case–it’s simply saying that there is enough evidence that is reliable enough for purposes of a civil standard and thus the Sun can’t be said to have knowingly published false information.
The lawyers in the British case for Depp absolutely attempted to undermine Heard’s credibility just as they did in the American case. The lawyers in Depp’s American case said in their closing argument that (paraphrasing because I don’t have the exact quote ready)–“if any part of Heard’s claims are false, you have to believe they are all false.” That is an argument Depp’s attorneys of course wanted the jury to buy, but there is no basis in law for that. A court and a tryer of fact (judge or jury) is entirely allowed to look at a mountain of contradictory evidence and find that even if parts of a claim seem unlikely or false, that other parts of the same claim could be true. Additionally given what most of us probably know from simple human relations and ever having known anyone, or been involved personally, in a divorce–there is almost always one person’s truth and another person’s truth, and they are rarely identical. Additionally in a fraught romantic relationship lies and abuse (both physical and emotional) are not uncommon.
It should also be noted that at least some evidence the British court heard, the Virginia court did not allow into the case, and that evidence tended to be more evidence that was negative for Depp.
As I’ve said all along, there is nothing like absolute proof in this case, but that isn’t what a civil trial is about.
It still feels like equivocation to say that the UK ruling was that Depp abused Heard. Isn’t it more accurate to say that the UK ruling said the paper had enough of a basis to run their story without exposing themselves to legal liability, mainly because they had Heard as a source?
You keep using language like this, but wasn’t most of that mountain from Heard?
My understanding is that the majority of Depp’s exes defended him, while only one (Ellen Barkin?) supported Heard’s accusations, and that support was in the form of a single anecdote when he threw an…ashtray?..at her. (Not a great look, Johnny.)
As you might imagine, it’s kind of tough to google the UK stuff now that there are so many search results about the US case.
What did the majority of Depp’s romantic partners say? Did they come out publicly to #MeToo him? Let’s see if I can Google who his exes are, at least:
Vanessa Paradis
Winona Ryder
Jennifer Grey
Sherilyn Fenn
Kate Moss
Ellen Barkin
Lori Anne Allison
What did they say? Did they confirm that Depp is an abusive guy in relationships, or is it just Heard’s lies and that one time he threw something at Barkin? Is that what the mountain was?
Just googling one, here’s what Google says Ryder said:
Although she was careful to clarify that she wasn’t calling anyone a liar but only recounting her own experiences, Ryder said that Depp was never abusive to her, and that he was only ever a a really good, loving and caring guy.
It’s hard for me to reconcile the concept of ‘most of his exes say he’s a good dude’ with ‘we have a mountain of evidence that says Depp is an abuser.’ One of the takeaway lessons from the entire #MeToo movement is that shitty guys are consistently shitty throughout their lives.
No, that isn’t what the ruling was. The ruling found that the core claim of the Sun article–that Depp was a wife beater was not libelous because it was true to a civil standard. I understand people may not want that to be what the ruling was, but that is what the ruling was.
It all had a genesis in Heard, but it was not all from Heard, no. There were lots of witnesses, physical evidence, etc. While I know people don’t want to read it, I linked the UK’s full decision upthread, it lists it all out. Note that no one (including the judge) is saying you can’t discredit or debunk a single piece of evidence that was revealed at trial. The judge is basically saying he thinks the totality of the evidence suggests, that to a civil standard, Depp abused heard on at least some occasions, so the Sun article was not libelous. A civil standard essentially boils down to “more likely true than not true”, and like all such judgements is not objective, the court systems in common law countries try to be as objective as can be possible, but most cases both civil and criminal ultimately rely on the trier of fact (judge or jury) having to make an objective decision.
It’s not actually that shocking for two juries to come to different conclusions with two cases that have significantly overlapping evidence, nor is it surprising for a judge bench trial to come to a different decision than a jury trial. It doesn’t necessarily mean any party is intrinsically wrong in how it found. In this particular case I do think the American jury was easily swayed by the argument that if you can find anything in Heard’s claims that are untrue you have to dismiss all the other evidence–which I think a judge with more legal experience understands is not a required conclusion under the law but a matter of opinion for the trier of fact to determine.
My opinion is that Amber Heard is a toxic abuser, and that Johnny Depp – an otherwise regular non-abusive guy but no more a saint than anyone else – essentially reflected Heard’s behavior back to her in their relationship.
You know how like if you start dating someone who’s really into biking and then all of a sudden you’re way into biking and all your friends are giving you the side-eye because they’ve never seen you ride a bike before in your life? It’s so easy to take on characteristics of your romantic partner.
I think that’s what happened. Depp was toxic with Heard specifically because she was toxic. I can easily imagine an actor subsuming their personality into their relationships much like a teenager. They don’t seem like the most emotionally mature lot.
I certainly think that’s possible. I have never said that I think Amber Heard is good, my core position is this was a toxic relationship and I think there is ample evidence both sides behaved in a toxic fashion, I think given Depp’s drug abuse and things that I don’t think can be debunked at all (like some of this text messages), it seems very likely to me even if you fully believe all of the discrediting of Heard he was abusive in the relationship. For me too, a decent chunk of the “discredited” Heard claims are “discredited” because you can present some level of claim that she was full of shit, but it doesn’t always rise to obvious proof–i.e. it could still be a true claim just Depp’s team did a good job showing when you should doubt it, in a criminal case that would make the evidence problematic moreso than when talking to a civil standard. I think while it may be possible one side is irredeemably some bad person that caused most of the problems, to me it seems most likely it was a toxic relationship with both actors behaving badly, fueled in part by drug problems.
What I have said all along is I don’t think it makes sense for people not party to this marriage to “choose sides”, particularly when there is sufficient evidence for most reasonable people to conclude that this was a toxic marriage with two people who behaved poorly, that’s my meta view of the situation before getting into any of the minutiae.
The other layer is that to some degree defamation and libel claims have to be “proven” not just “suggested”, I think that is why the court in the UK was correct to go with not finding libel, and why I think the American jury was swayed more by negative characterizations of Heard and emotional appeals. It isn’t that Heard didn’t do anything bad, but the she is accused of defamation due to a specific Washington Post article, and to me if you compare the claims in that article with the evidence I don’t think it is demonstrated to a civil standard that she defamed him. That doesn’t mean she was telling the truth, it is difficult for a court to actually find the ‘real truth’ in a situation like this.
From the testimony I heard from Johnny Depp’s and Amber Heard’s mouths, and also tape recordings I heard of Amber Heard played as evidence, I don’t see how any reasonable person can both-sides this one. It’s clear as day what happened and who the toxic person is.
Yes, exactly. I heard that too. That’s her toxicity rubbing off on him, like riding a bike with your new significant other.
If that quote is reflective of the kind of guy he is, why do his other exes extol his virtues as…checks notes…“he was only ever a a really good, loving and caring guy.”
Perhaps his increasing fame and drug use contributed to his increase in bad behavior? And perhaps just something about her set him off? I’m not intending to blame her or paint her as “innocent.” It’s possible she was equally harsh in return to Depp.
And I am by no means an expert, but given people are referring to it as a toxic relationship I felt this article on abuse might be useful]in a general sense. (https://www.nbcnews.com/think/amp/rcna26709)
Yet you picked a side before the US trial began by accepting UK judges opinion as indisputable.
Also, the fact that they are both horrible people has no legal bearing on the matter, horrible people are allowed to sue each other and one of them can be proven right and the other wrong at a trial.