A judge has squashed actress Amber Heard’s efforts to have a $10 million judgement against her in favor of ex-husband Johnny Depp overturned and a mistrial declared. Judge Penney Azcarate threw out every one of Heard’s claims in a written order on Wednesday, beginning with her lawyers’ insistence that a juror had deliberately switched places with his father in order to sit on the “high-profile case”.
“The court cannot assume, as Mr. Depp asks it to, that Juror 15’s apparently improper service was an innocent mistake,” the lawyer argued. The juror in question had responded to a jury summons sent to his father, though the two shared both an address and a name.
“The juror was vetted, sat for the entire jury, deliberated, and reached a verdict,” Azcarate countered, adding “all jurors followed their oaths, the court’s instructions, and orders. The court is bound by the competent decision of the jury.”
The jury found in favor of Depp last month in his libel suit…
