Amber Heard settles defamation lawsuit against Johnny Depp

US actress Amber Heard will pay John­ny Depp $1 mil­lion to set­tle her defama­tion law­suit, Dep­p’s attor­ney told the BBC.

This spring, the for­mer cou­ple faced off in court and made headlines.

In June, a jury in Vir­ginia over­whelm­ing­ly sup­port­ed Depp, 59, after find­ing that Depp had defamed her with an arti­cle claim­ing to be a vic­tim of abuse.

Hurd, 36, who announced the set­tle­ment on Mon­day, said the deci­sion was “not an act of concession.”

Ear­li­er this month, it filed a law­suit to over­turn the jury ver­dict or seek a new trial.

How­ev­er, in a state­ment released Mon­day, the Aqua­man actress “lost her faith in the Amer­i­can legal sys­tem,” she said, mak­ing the deci­sion to settle.

“Even if the appeal in the Unit­ed States is suc­cess­ful, the best out­come would be a retri­al,” she said. “I can’t do that”

Depp described him­self as “a pub­lic fig­ure rep­re­sent­ing domes­tic abuse” with­out men­tion­ing Depp, based on a 2018 opin­ion piece writ­ten by his ex-wife and pub­lished in The Wash­ing­ton Post. was suing for defama­tion. Hurd filed a counterclaim.

The six-week tele­vised tri­al received wide pub­lic atten­tion. The for­mer cou­ple, who divorced in 2017, gave very dif­fer­ent accounts of their five-year rela­tion­ship, both accus­ing each oth­er of mis­con­duct and vio­lence. Depp has vehe­ment­ly denied alle­ga­tions that his ex-wife was men­tal­ly, phys­i­cal­ly and sex­u­al­ly abused.

The jury over­whelm­ing­ly favored Depp and ordered $15 mil­lion in damages.

The ver­dict came as a sur­prise to some lawyers, espe­cial­ly after Depp lost a sim­i­lar case in the UK two years ago.

On Mon­day, Dep­p’s attor­ney said in a state­ment that he was hap­py to “for­mal­ly close this painful chap­ter for Depp,” and that the actor will donate the $1 mil­lion set­tle­ment to var­i­ous charities.