Johnny Depp’s attorneys have branded Amber Heard’s request for a retrial as “outlandish” and stated that the actress had beforehand waived her proper for a retrial in her defamation case in opposition to her ex-husband.
The Aquaman star’s authorized workforce stated that her due course of was violated and known as on the choose to declare a mistrial after they claimed that one of many jurors was not truly the particular person summoned to be on the jury.
In response, Depp’s workforce submitted a 36-page memorandum to the courtroom arguing that all the pieces concerning the trial was reliable.
Both events have been discovered chargeable for defamation of their lawsuits in opposition to one another in June within the high-profile, six-week-long trial that captured the web’s consideration. The jury awarded Depp $15 million in damages and $2 million to Heard.
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Heard’s attorneys have now filed courtroom paperwork claiming that somebody who had been initially summoned to function a juror within the trial had not appeared and was changed by another person.
Juror 15 was apparently born in 1970, however the jury summons was for somebody of the identical final identify born in 1945, courtroom paperwork filed by Heard’s workforce on July 8 stated. According to the submitting, this meant that the particular person “was not part of the jury panel and could not have properly served” within the trial.
The paperwork filed within the circuit courtroom in Fairfax, Virginia, stated that “due process was therefore compromised” and as such “a mistrial should be declared, and a new trial ordered.”
In their memorandum, Depp’s attorneys known as the questions relating to Juror 15 as “pure speculation.”
“Ms. Heard’s desperate, after-the-fact demand for an investigation of Juror 15 based on a purported error in his birth date is…misplaced…Moreover, Ms. Heard’s argument is based on pure speculation,” the submitting learn.
In the conclusion, Depp’s attorneys at Brown Rudnick LLP wrote: “For all the reasons set forth above, Mr. Depp respectfully requests that this court deny Ms. Heard’s frivolous motion in its entirety and reject her outlandish requests to set aside the jury verdict, dismiss the complaint, or, in the alternative, order a new trial, and investigate Juror 15.”
In the submitting, Depp’s attorneys additionally state that Heard “waived her right” for a re-trial by not flagging her issues about Juror 15 earlier.
“As a threshold matter, Ms. Heard waived her right to challenge the accuracy of the information listed in the jury panel by failing to raise this objection contemporaneously,” the memo reads.
Read the complete memorandum right here.
The actress was reportedly offered with an inventory of potential jurors, “five days before the jury was impaneled and reportedly had “ample time to confirm the accuracy of the knowledge contained therein.”
In their own court filing, Heard’s team said that it was “deeply troubling for a person not summoned for jury responsibility nonetheless to look for jury responsibility and serve on a jury, particularly in a case equivalent to this.”