The London case decided in 2020 and the Virginia case decided in 2022 were not successive rounds of the same lawsuit. Johnny Depp brought them against different defendants over different publications under different law. Amber Heard was a witness in the UK case and the defendant and counterclaimant in Virginia. Reading the captions and verdict forms before reading social-media commentary is the simplest way to avoid a false contradiction.
In this explainer ↓
London: Depp sued a publisher and a journalist
In Depp v News Group Newspapers Ltd and Dan Wootton, Depp sued the publisher of The Sun and a journalist for libel over a 2018 article. Heard was not a defendant. Mr Justice Nicol conducted a bench trial, meaning a judge—not a jury—heard the evidence and decided the facts and law. His November 2, 2020 approved judgment dismissed Depp’s claim after concluding the defendants had established the substantial truth of the published allegation under the English-law defense before the court.
The judgment assessed 14 alleged incidents and found the defense proved 12. That is a finding in litigation between Depp and the newspaper defendants. It was not a criminal conviction, and it did not impose civil liability on Heard. In March 2021, the Court of Appeal refused Depp permission to appeal. Its official summary said the proposed criticisms of the trial judge had no real prospect of success; the appellate court was reviewing the judgment, not retrying every incident from scratch.
Source record: Courts and Tribunals Judiciary [1] · Courts and Tribunals Judiciary [2]
Virginia: Depp and Heard sued each other
The Virginia action, Depp v Heard, concerned three statements associated with Heard’s 2018 Washington Post op-ed. Depp sued Heard for defamation. Heard counterclaimed over three statements that Depp’s former lawyer Adam Waldman had made to the Daily Mail. A counterclaim is a claim brought by a defendant against the plaintiff within the same case. After a televised civil trial, a seven-person Fairfax County jury returned a unanimous verdict on June 1, 2022.
The jury found for Depp on all three statements submitted with his claim, awarding $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages. The court reduced the punitive component to Virginia’s statutory cap of $350,000. On Heard’s counterclaim, the jury found for her on one of the three Waldman statements and awarded $2 million in compensatory damages. Saying simply that one person “won” deletes that split result.
Source record: Fairfax County Circuit Court [3] · Fairfax County Circuit Court via Courthouse News [4]
Why the outcomes do not cancel each other
Courts decide defined claims between named parties. The UK defendants had to defend what their article published; the Virginia jury answered questions about particular op-ed and Waldman statements. The evidence, legal instructions, burdens, parties and decision-makers were not identical. Even the word “truth” operated inside different legal tests attached to different publications.
Neither result gives an editor a license to pronounce a universal judgment about every disputed event in the former couple’s relationship. The responsible summary identifies what each tribunal decided and stops there. It also avoids treating audience reaction to a livestream as evidence. A clip can show what happened in the courtroom at that moment; it cannot substitute for the complete evidentiary record or the questions on the verdict form.
Source record: Courts and Tribunals Judiciary [1] · Fairfax County Circuit Court [3]
The later US settlement
Both sides pursued appeals after the Virginia judgment. In December 2022 they settled those appeals. AP reported that the agreement included a $1 million payment to Depp. A settlement is a negotiated end to litigation, not a new jury verdict and not an appellate ruling endorsing every part of the judgment below.
The durable chronology is therefore precise: a UK judge dismissed Depp’s libel claim against newspaper defendants in November 2020; the UK appeal court refused permission to appeal in March 2021; a Virginia jury found liability on Depp’s three claims and one of Heard’s counterclaims in June 2022; and the parties settled the US appeals that December. This article reports those outcomes without deciding which party was truthful beyond the findings each court actually made.
Source record: Associated Press via KTVZ [5]
Continue this thread.
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Read the original record.
Reviewed Sep 19, 2026. These sources support the bounded claims described below; editorial interpretation and hypothetical examples are identified in the text. No historical site publication date is implied.
Courts and Tribunals Judiciary · Source publication: Nov 2, 2020 · Reviewed Sep 19, 2026
Official approved UK trial judgment, [2020] EWHC 2911 (QB).
Courts and Tribunals Judiciary · Source publication: Mar 25, 2021 · Reviewed Sep 19, 2026
Official summary of refusal of permission to appeal; full judgment controls.
Fairfax County Circuit Court · Source publication: Jun 1, 2022 · Reviewed Sep 19, 2026
Official verdict-form URL; direct retrieval returned no text, so figures were cross-checked against the entered judgment and AP reporting.
Fairfax County Circuit Court via Courthouse News · Source publication: Jun 24, 2022 · Reviewed Sep 19, 2026
Filed judgment order preserving claim-by-claim verdict and damages; mirrored court PDF.
Associated Press via KTVZ · Source publication: Dec 19, 2022 · Reviewed Sep 19, 2026
Contemporaneous settlement report; settlement is not treated as a merits ruling.
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