Amber Heard is requesting a new trial against actor Johnny Depp, her ex-husband, one month after a Virginia jury decided mostly in favor of him in a defamation lawsuit.
Heard’s legal team, in a court filing Friday, claims that a person who appeared on the jury was not the person summoned for jury duty, Deadline reported.
A judge ordered Heard to pay Depp roughly $10 million in damages following a 2018 opinion article in which the actor referred to herself as a victim of domestic abuse but did not name her abuser.
She was awarded $2 million in compensatory damages.
Heard’s legal team wrote that “Juror No. 15,” listed as a 77-year-old on the jury panel list, is registered to vote at the same address as a 52-year-old with the same name, according to the filing.
“The individual who appeared for jury duty with this name was obviously the younger one,” the legal team wrote.
“Thus, the 52-year-old … sitting on the jury for six weeks was never summoned for jury duty on April 11 and did not ‘appear in the list.’”
The legal team detailed how jurors on trials are asked to verify their identity before their court service.
Jurors are also asked to verify their identity on a juror questionnaire webpage in Fairfax County, a questionnaire that asks jurors to log in with their birth date, the team said.
“Those safeguards are in place and relied upon by the parties to verify the identity of the correct juror, to ensure due process and a fair trial for all litigants,” the legal team wrote.
“When these safeguards are circumvented or not followed, as appears to be the case here, the right to a jury trial and due process are undermined and compromised.”
HuffPost reached out to both Heard’s and Depp’s legal teams regarding the filing on Friday.
The filing comes after a representative of Heard said she planned to appeal the verdict of the multimillion-dollar lawsuit in June.
Heard, in an interview with NBC News last month, said she has feared future defamation lawsuits for speaking out about her relationship with Depp.
