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Share to FacebookShare to TwitterShare to LinkedinTopline Amber Heard said Monday she has decided to settle the multimillion-dollar defamation case brought against her former husband, fellow actor Johnny Depp, in Virginia, saying she has “lost faith in the American legal system” after she was ordered to pay $15 million in damages to Depp when a jury earlier this year found she defamed him by calling herself a survivor of domestic abuse.

Actors Amber Heard (L) and Johnny Depp attend the “Black Mass” premiere during the 2015 Toronto … [+] International Film Festival at The Elgin on September 14, 2015 in Toronto, Canada.

Getty Images Key Facts Heard posted on Instagram Monday morning that she made the “very difficult decision” to settle the case, saying it was an opportunity to “emancipate” herself from a situation she never chose on terms she can agree to.

Even if her appeal had been successful, the best case scenario would have been a retrial in which a new jury would consider the evidence again, Heard wrote, adding that she “simply cannot go through that for a third time.”

Her testimony of abuse in the trial earlier this year “served as entertainment and social media fodder,” Heard said.

The settlement involves no admission of guilt and “is not an act of concession,” Heard said, adding that the deal includes no restrictions “with respect to my voice moving forward.”

She did not specify other terms of the settlement.

Crucial Quote “I defended my truth and in doing so my life as I knew it was destroyed,” Heard said. “The vilification I have faced on social media is an amplified version of the ways in which women are re-victimized when they come forward.”

Key Background Depp sued Heard after she identified herself as “a public victim representing domestic abuse” in a 2018 Washington Post op-ed in which did not mention Depp by name. The trial, which lasted from April to June, featured Heard and Depp describing their relationship drastically differently, each characterizing the other as the aggressor of abuse. The trial was highly publicized and made Heard a target for online harassment and bullying. The jury sided with Depp and ordered Heard to pay $15 million in damages, which her lawyer later said she could not afford. Heard won part of a countersuit she filed against Depp, and was awarded $2 million. After the decision, Heard said she lived in fear of future lawsuits from her ex-husband. In 2020, Depp lost a libel case in the U.K. after a judge found an article by the Sun that claimed he assaulted Heard was “substantially true.”

Further Reading Jury Rules Amber Heard Defamed Johnny Depp In Domestic Abuse Op-Ed (Forbes)

Johnny Depp Will Appear In Rihanna’s Upcoming Fashion Show Five Months After Amber Heard Trial (Forbes)

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