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A month after the jury voted in favor of Johnny Depp following the end of his defamation trial against his ex-wife and actress Amber Heard, the 58-year-old actor is being asked to pay the American Civil Liberties Union $38,000 for attorneys’ fees in complying with a subpoena for evidence. The Pirates of the Caribbean actor’s legal team had requested documents from the ACLU as evidence to win the legal battle against Amber Heard.
According to the ACLU, they provided Johnny Depp’s lawyers 1900 documents which required immense work to gather. The actor required said material to prove that the Aquaman actress did not pay them the promised sum of $3.5 million.
ACLU requested that Johnny Depp pay $86,000 as reimbursement for producing the documents as a “considerable expense spent responding to onerous subpoenas served by Mr. Depp from an underlying action in which neither the ACLU nor any of its employees are parties.”
Stephanie Teplin, an attorney representing the ACLU, said that the sum seemed reasonable as Depp’s legal team asked for thousands of documents that were created over six years as evidence to be used in the defamation trial.
In June, Johnny Depp’s lawyers filed a motion stating that they refused to pay the large sum to the organization.
Court orders Johnny Depp to pay the ACLU
On Friday, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron announced that Johnny Depp was to pay the ACLU $38,000, which is less than half of what was asked by the ACLU. Depp’s lawyer, Jessica Meyers from Brown Rudnick, stated that the organization’s original request was “exorbitant and unreasonable.”
During arguments about the payment, Meyers argued that Depp did not need to pay any form of compensation given the role the ACLU played in the defamatory op-ed piece that led to Heard and Depp’s legal battle. Meyers said:
“They were responsible for drafting and placing the op-ed that the Virginia jury just found to be defamatory to Mr. Depp.”
However, the judge deemed that the organization had to be reimbursed. After it was ruled that the organization was to be paid by Depp, the ACLU’s spokesperson told Newsweek:
“We are pleased that the Court recognized that the ACLU complied with Mr. Depp's requests and did so at great expense.”
Many found it unreasonable for Depp to have to pay the ACLU. A few tweets read:
How was the ACLU involved in Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s defamation trial?
Depp filed a defamation lawsuit against his ex-wife and actress Amber Heard after she called herself a victim of domestic violence in a 2018 op-ed piece published by The Washington Post. The actor sued Heard for $50 million. Meanwhile, Heard sued Depp for $100 million.
After a sensationalized legal battle that lasted six weeks, the jury unanimously voted in favor of Depp. He was to be awarded $10.35 million in damages. Amber Heard was to be paid $2 million as well.
During their legal battle, it was revealed that the actress had not paid half of her divorce settlement to the ACLU, which she claimed to have done in interviews. The actress was to pay $3.5 million of her $7 million divorce settlement. While Heard was cross-examined by Depp’s attorneys, the actress infamously stated that she “pledged” to donate to the organization, when in reality she had not paid the amount to date.
