Depp could waive $14m Heard payout

Actor’s lawyers indicate he may forget damages if Heard agrees to end the case. She can’t pay, but is unlikely to accept any deal.

Johnny Depp gestures to fans during a recess outside court during the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard civil trial. Picture: Cliff Owen/Consolidated News Pictures/Getty Images

Huge sums have been spent on lawyers and bitter quarrels with his ex-wife have been broadcast to the public in one of the most keenly watched trials in recent memory.

However, Johnny Depp could waive the $AU14 million in damages he was awarded in Virginia, his lawyer indicated on Wednesday.

After the verdict last week a lawyer for Amber Heard, his former wife, said she was “absolutely not” able to pay the damages.

She is expected to appeal against the verdict.

There are suggestions that Depp could seek to end the case by offering to forgo the damages. Asked if his legal team would seek such a deal, Ben Chew, one of his lawyers, said that he and his colleague could not “disclose lawyer client communications, but Mr Depp testified and as we both made clear in our respective closings, this was never about the money for Mr Depp”.

Appearing on Good Morning America with Camille Vasquez, another of Depp’s lawyers, Chew said: “This was about restoring his reputation and he’s done that.”

Amber Heard is expected to appeal against the verdict. Picture: AFP

Depp, 58, sued Heard over an article she wrote for The Washington Post in 2018 in which she identified herself as a victim of domestic abuse.

The two actors had met in 2009 on the set of The Rum Diary and married in 2015.

Heard filed for divorce 15 months later and sought a restraining order, saying Depp had been “verbally and physically abusive to me”.

‘Weight of the world off his shoulders’

On Wednesday, Vasquez said the trial had allowed Depp “to speak the truth for the first time”. Chew said that when word of the verdict reached the actor “it was like the weight of the world had been taken off his shoulders”.

Chew denied that the intense support the actor attracted on social media platforms such as TikTok had any bearing in court.

However, the actor himself has launched a TikTok account, which already has nine million followers, and used it to issue a statement of thanks and to attempt to draw a line under the verdict. “We did the right thing together, all because you cared,” he said. “And now we will move forward together.”

A spokesman for Heard responded that “as Johnny Depp says he’s ‘moving forward’, women’s rights are moving backward. The verdict’s message to victims of domestic violence is … be afraid to stand up and speak out.”

Mitchell Epner, of the New York law firm Rottenberg Lipman Rich, who was not involved in the case, said he expected Depp’s lawyers would waive damages in return for Heard agreeing to end the case as the verdict meant he could be considered again for Hollywood roles after being a “pariah”. However, he thought Heard would be unlikely to accept any deal as the two “have fundamentally different agendas”.

THE TIMES