Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s defamation trial is presently ongoing in Fairfax, Virginia.
According to the Independent, Depp sued his ex-wife for $50m after she wrote an essay in The Washington Post in 2018 throughout which she said she was a sufferer of house abuse.
Amber has responded with a $100m counterclaim and the trial is presently in its second week.
People all through the globe are watching the trial reside, nevertheless why is it happening in Virginia? Read on to look out out…
Johnny Depp filed the lawsuit in Virginia
Johnny Depp and Amber Heard every reside in California. So, why is the trial in Virginia?
Well, the simple reply is on account of that’s the place the actor filed his $50 million defamation lawsuit in opposition to Amber Heard.
After submitting one libel case in London, Johnny Depp filed a second defamation lawsuit in March 2019 in Fairfax, Virginia.
However, there’s a selected motive why the 58-year-old filed the lawsuit in Virginia, not California.
Her Washington Post article was posted there
The defamation lawsuit centres spherical an opinion piece that Amber Heard wrote and printed in The Washington Post in 2018.
She didn’t level out Johnny Depp’s establish, nevertheless she claimed that she had been a sufferer of house abuse all through the content material materials of the article.
Johnny Depp is suing his ex-wife for defamation over what she wrote inside the Washington Post op-ed titled: “I spoke up against sexual violence — and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change.”
The Washington Post’s printing press facility, which is the place the newspapers are printed, is in Springfield, Virginia. The 324,000 sq. foot publishing plant was inbuilt 1998 and presently stays there in 2022.
The Washington Post’s on-line model could be created on a digital platform in Virginia and routed by servers inside the state.
“Using the servers located in Springfield, Virginia, The Washington Post posted it to the internet on December 18, 2018. Therefore, Mr. Depp’s cause of action arises in Virginia,” a Virginia resolve revealed in July 2019.
As her article was uploaded to The Washington Post in Virginia, Johnny Depp filed his defamation lawsuit there.
Virginia moreover has no Anti-SLAPP authorized pointers
As properly as that, the actor could be believed to have filed the lawsuit in Virginia on account of state’s looser SLAPP authorized pointers.
A SLAPP, which stands for ‘Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation’, is a civil lawsuit filed in opposition to an individual to principally silence criticism.
In California, there are anti-SLAPP authorized pointers in place that are supposed to stop people from using lawsuits to intimidate individuals who discover themselves using their First Amendment rights.
The state believes that everyone is entitled to freedom of speech and beneath California’s anti-SLAPP authorized pointers, Johnny Depp’s defamation lawsuit could have been dismissed.
As Virginia doesn’t have these anti-SLAPP authorized pointers, his lawsuit was further susceptible to go to trial inside the state.
Amber Heard did try to take the lawsuit to California in 2019, nevertheless a resolve in Fairfax denied her request.
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