Johnny DEPP v Amber HEARD - Analysing (Whatever's Left) of Amber's Counterclaim

hi everyone welcome back to my channel today's video was highly requested and it is about the opinion letter that was released by chief justice bruce white pertaining to the johnny depp and amber heard case in virginia on the 4th of january 2021 and it's with regards to johnny's objections to amber's counter claim you'll remember the counterclaim right where we were all accused of being bots and johnny is the mastermind and puppeteer behind this social media movement in support of him so chief justice white was asked to consider the following firstly whether a declaratory judgment should be made in amber's favor now we've talked about declaratory judgments in great detail a few months ago when discussing her counter claim so if you don't remember what that is please check out that video in summary it's a declaration of someone's right so for example a declaration that amber is protected by anti-slap laws and has the right to express herself secondly whether johnny's statements are actionable under virginia defamation laws or whether johnny's statements are defamatory thirdly whether amber has alleged sufficient facts to prove a violation of the virginia computer crimes act and this is where of course the bots come in fourthly whether amber's counter claims arise out of the same transaction as johnny's complaint which is very important with regards to the statute of limitations because in virginia defamation cases have a one year statute of limitations so if one year passes from the date that the statement was made no action can be taken and again for anyone who hasn't watched my previous videos this is something that we talked about in great detail when discussing amber's counterclaim and finally whether johnny himself is entitled to anti-slap immunity for his statements because i have at least three videos i think dedicated to discussing amber's counterclaims i won't be rehashing what she states in her counter claim so i'm going to go ahead with this video assuming that you have the knowledge and the context to understand what we're talking about and if you don't again i will link the counter claim videos in the description box so if you want to catch yourself up and get up to date then feel free to do so and you can always come back to this video later so first the judge talks about amber's request for a declaratory judgment to be made as you remember from previous videos amber's main argument is that her statements in the op-ed are expressions of opinion that are protected by the first amendment now this request of hers was denied and the main issue that chief justice white had is that she is asserting both a defense of freedom of expression pursuant to virginia's anti-slap laws so that's her defense and then she's also asserting that she wants a declaratory judgment to the same effect so she's asking for the same thing twice and so the judge believes that this is a waste of time and resources if your defense is relying primarily on the anti-slap laws then why should we also waste time considering a declaratory judgment that seeks to make the same order really specifically here you can see the judge stated that to hear both ms heard's anti-slap defense and her declaratory judgment counterclaim would equate to adjudicating the same issue twice the judge further goes on to say that since this court would not rule on amber's declaratory judgment counter claim until after all matters have been tried the purpose of a declaratory judgment which is to resolve disputes before the right has been violated is defeated so what he's saying here is that the purpose of a declaratory judgment is to protect someone's right before they're actually infringed upon but here because of the nature of the claim the court can't properly consider or declare that amber is immune before the matter is tried another aspect of amber's argument of granting her a declaratory judgment is that if the case against her could be dismissed at any moment or dropped by johnny she would be deprived of the opportunity to recover attorney fees but the judge points out that this is not the case because even if johnny's claim was dismissed she would still go ahead with her counter claim and virginia's anti-slap statute is only concerned with awarding reasonable attorney fees if a case is dismissed but not when that defendant also has a separate counter claim that they still want to go ahead with for these reasons the court declined to grant amber a declaratory judgment that she is immune as per virginia's anti-slap laws so amber is claiming that johnny made defamatory statements against her and once again this was discussed in a previous video johnny argued in response that they were not defamatory and that in fact he was merely repeating what was being said and relied upon in his actual complaint which is protected by absolute privilege or he was merely defending himself so the main element that johnny is fighting against and is insisting does not exist in his statements is the requisite intent to defame amber so first the judge talks about the requisite sting so does the statement come across as a statement of fact that is defamatory to amber's reputation so here is where the judge lists the eight statements that amber is relying on to claim defamation and defamation per se a is in relation to johnny's interview with gq from november 2018 and then b through h all pertain to adam waldman who is considered johnny's agent in this situation where he has told multiple publications predominantly in the uk that amber is orchestrating a hoax the court found that particularly in the context of today's climate with the metoo movement these statements contain the requisite sting for an actionable defamation claim johnny also asserted that his statements and those of adam waldman's are protected opinion statements but the court found that although these statements can be understood as johnny and mr waldman's opinion of what happened they nevertheless imply that amber is lying so these statements must survive the objections or the demur because whether amber is lying or not is a fact that is capable of being proven true or false so only statements of fact can be defamatory opinions cannot calling someone a liar when it comes to things that can be proven or disproven stops it from being purely an opinion purely because it can be proven or disproven in a court of law johnny also argued that his statements are protected as fair and accurate accounts of his lawsuit so basically whenever adam waldman talked about amber orchestrating a hoax or making things up then that was directly related or a summary rather of what they were arguing in the lawsuit itself now the judge disagreed with johnny here so although a lot of what johnny said is also contained in his complaint the statements didn't appear to have been made in the context of attempting to recount litigation instead the judge found that johnny made factual assertions that did not fairly and accurately summarize the litigation and accordingly his statements are not protected i also want to say that i will be reserving my opinions and my analysis towards the end of the video now johnny also stated that particularly with the november 2018 gq magazine article his statements were made in self-defense and are therefore privileged so for that interview he was questioned about amber's allegations and in defense of himself he said she's lying i never did anything to her now once again the judge disagreed with johnny he found that because amber has alleged facts in support of a showing of malice so amber is alleging facts that prove johnny said these statements with malice the court can't properly decide this claim on d murr so it's not that he completely disagrees with johnny it's just that he can't adequately decide whether johnny's statements were made in self-defense or with malice at this stage so again this is all contained in amber's counterclaim she presented some examples and some evidence of johnny's intent to ruin her career for example you know those texts that he sent i think they were to christian karina where he says you know i'm gonna ruin her she's done this to herself but i do want to point out the judge isn't saying he believes these assertions but he can't at this stage purely at the d murr stage decide whether there is merit now although this sounds like bad news just bear with me because the november 2018 gq article is very problematic for amber in an entirely different area so i just want you to bear that in mind as we progress because when we get to a further stage of the opinion letter you're going to realize that everything is going to go downhill for amber particularly with regards to many of the statements that she is relying on in support of her counterclaim now we get to the virginia computer crimes act where the demur was sustained which means it's successful johnny's objections are successful now i've gone through the elements of this particular legislation in great detail in at least two videos so we won't be doing that here the judge found that none of amber's allegations satisfy the elements of the legislation another thing i want to point out is the judge actually echoes an argument of mine that i made in my videos when i said that the messages that johnny sent to his personal friends paul bettany christian carino they were all sent in private this was a man venting in private to his personal friends with no intention of publishing these text messages particularly to amber because they only came out as evidence against him in this proceeding so it's not even evidence in support of him he wouldn't have wanted these texts to come out if anything and the judge states that here he says that rather it appears that mr depp texted those statements privately to two of his friends and miss heard has not alleged that mr depp intended for her to see them and a major component of the virginia computer crimes act is that the intention is to inspire fear and intimidation in the other person being amber in this case but if a text message is always meant to be private that intention is impossible to satisfy or to prove and so everything pertaining to her claims regarding the virginia computer crimes act fails now we get to the upside of all of this because now we consider the statute of limitations now this is a huge problem for amber that i talked about in detail when i discussed her counterclaim a lot of the statements that she is relying on as defamatory do not fall within the one-year statute of limitations the judge found that statements a through e are barred by the statute of limitations and as you can see here this includes the gq magazine interview now as we discussed when talking about her counter claim she's alleging that the statute of limitations doesn't really apply to her in this situation because the statements that she is relying on arise out of the same transaction or the same occurrence that led to johnny filing his lawsuit now the judge goes through a lot of case law here that we don't have to go through so we're just going to go straight to his application of the law to this current situation so he found that while both amber's allegations and johnny's allegations originate from the same set of facts being their dispute in 2016 he still found that amber's statements were made in the washington post whereas johnny's statements or those of adam waldman were made in gq magazine people magazine the daily mail etc so the judge found that the only connection between the claims is in origin they both stem from the 2016 incident because these claims arise from statements made in separate publications on separate dates and by different people the court is not persuaded that mr depp could have anticipated at the time of filing his complaint and need to defend against any statements made to other publications so basically johnny was blindsided there was no way that he could have anticipated the gq magazine article and the other articles being brought into this case because they are so unrelated the lack of relatedness and failure to reasonably put mr depp on notice of a potential counter claim compels this court to grant the plain bar to statements a through e so it's not fair to johnny if the counterclaim was to be upheld with regards to these statements because he was not put on notice and this is why i told you when we discussed the gq magazine particularly it may sound ridiculous and infuriating that johnny's self-defense claim was not necessarily accepted by the judge it was irrelevant to even worry about that because at the end of the day the statute of limitations ran out and as i argued in my counterclaim video they were completely unrelated finally the judge considers whether johnny himself is entitled to anti-slap immunity the judge found that there was no support for the notion that johnny's statements are on matters on public concern another issue the judge had was that johnny's counsel neither argued nor addressed this point during oral arguments or in their reply brief and lastly he states that amber has alleged sufficient facts in her counterclaim to demonstrate that johnny may have made these statements with actual malice and as you can see from here in the screenshot actual malice is actual or constructive knowledge or with reckless disregard for whether the statements are false now i've used this exact same argument to argue against granting amber immunity as per virginia's anti-slap statute my main issue with her continuing to assert immunity was that if you read the actual immunity clause it states that this immunity does not extend to statements made with actual malice and the whole point of a trial here is to determine whether they were made with actual malice because if you'll remember public figures like johnny and amber have a much higher standard to prove defamation they must prove that it was made with actual malice so the negligence standard applies to the rest of us ordinary folk private citizens and actual malice applies to public figures since it's such a key element of proving this case it can't simply be decided on a whim without trying the facts at trial so for the same reasons johnny's claim of anti-slap immunity must also fail because amber is a public figure an actual malice plays into the elements that must be proven to prove defamation against her so in summary amber's claims of defamation and defamation per se were successful so they have survived the demur amber's claimed that she is entitled to a declaratory judgment that she is immune has been dismissed amber has failed in her claims of a violation of the computer crimes act statements a through e relied on by amber have failed as the limitation period of one year has expired however count two with respect to statements f g and h survive and that's because they are within the statute of limitations i don't necessarily agree with the judge's reasonings pertaining to the defamation and defamation per se allegations made by amber so i still very strongly believe that johnny's statements were made either in self-defense which granted is irrelevant because that particular statement will not progress as it is beyond the statute of limitations but then there are also the statements that survived and all three of them were made by adam waldman on behalf of johnny and i still believe wholeheartedly that these statements were made in direct relation to the civil lawsuit that adam waldman was at that time involved in and in charge of so i still view it as a lawyer commenting on his client's case as opposed to a lawyer or a person just stating things that are defamatory against another person he wasn't just going out there and making these allegations without having any relation or connection to the case so it is unfortunate that these three statements survived the dimer now don't forget just because statements survive the dumer that doesn't mean that when they get to trial the jury will buy amber's story a de murder isn't a hearing on the merits of a case so it's not a stage where the court is allowed to assess the merits or the strengths of an allegation as per virginia law a dimirror tests only the legal sufficiency of the factual allegations accordingly the court must accept as true all properly pled facts and all inferences fairly drawn from those facts and this is important to point out because i can see how this can be interpreted as the judge accepting amber's allegations he is not entitled to at this point to assess whether her allegations have merit or not at this point it's all about the legal arguments that are being made are they sound and according to him they were so with regards to these last three statements he believes that there is enough to send them off to trial for a jury to assess the merits of the claims other than that i am pleased to see that the play in bar was for the most part successful a lot of the statements were barred a through e only three made it through that's of course good news we need to take our victories where we can get them and i understand that a lot of people would still be fuming about the fact that the three survive but we need to look at this as the big picture here so the entirety of her allegations regarding the violation of the computer crimes act have failed and then we have five out of eight statements dismissed because they fell outside the limitation period i don't know about you but i tend to be an optimist and i'm not saying that this means johnny will win i'm just saying that now he has a lot less to contend with when it comes to the counter claim all right that's it for this video i hope it makes sense i hope i helped to clear things up for you i actually did it on the fly because i didn't really have time to read it in detail before making the video as always don't forget to let me know what you think in the comments below if you enjoyed the video then please don't forget to hit that thumbs up or thumbs down if you didn't and if you aren't already subscribed please don't forget to hit that subscribe button thank you so much for watching stay safe and i'll catch you in a future video [Music] bye

Channel: Lost Beyond Pluto

Views: 26,777

Rating: 4.9866333 out of 5

Keywords: johnny depp, amber heard, johnny depp amber heard court, johnny depp amber heard case, johnny depp defamation, amber heard defamation, johnny depp amber heard defamation case, johnny depp amber heard court case, johnny depp amber heard trial, johnny depp amber heard defamation trial, johnny depp verdict, johnny depp lost beyond pluto, johhny depp, amber heard counterclaim, johnny deep

Id: sSu_bvw9qKo

Length: 20min 31sec (1231 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 08 2021