Amber Heard’s lawyer says she ‘absolutely can’t’ afford to pay $10m damages to Johnny Depp

Amber Heard’s lawyer, Elaine Bredehoft, has spoken out after Johnny Depp won his high-profile libel trial against his ex-wife. The court awarded the actor $10.4m (£8.2m) in damages, but Ms Bredehoft says Ms Heard can’t afford it.

When appearing on NBC’s Today show yesterday, presenter Savannah Guthrie asked the lawyer: “Is she able to pay a $10.4m judgement?”

Ms Bredehoft then responded: “Oh no, absolutely not.”

Earlier that day, Ms Bredehoft also spoke to Gayle King on CBS Mornings.

When asked why the jury ultimately did not believe Ms Heard, Ms Bredehoft claimed Johnny Depp’s legal team “weren’t fighting fair”.

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She said: “The way that Depp’s team approached this was based on ignorance of domestic violence.  

“They completely ignored the cycle of violence and just said, ‘Oh, she wouldn’t have done this if he had been hitting her’, that was their approach.”  
 
Co-host Nate Burleson then probed whether she thought his lawyers “weren’t fighting fair”.  

She said: “Correct, I don’t think they were fighting fair.”

She continued: “There were a lot of influences that were beyond our control, it was like a Roman Colosseum.

“Even though the jury were told not to go and look at anything, they had weekends, they have families, they have social media…how could they not have been influenced.”

Ms Bredehoft also confirmed that Amber plans to appeal the verdict.

On Wednesday, the jury found that she defamed her ex-husband after writing her 2018 op-ed for The Washington Post about her experiences as a survivor of domestic abuse.

The jurors found that Mr Depp did not assault his ex-wife and that her allegations of domestic abuse in her op-ed defamed him “with malice”.

However, they also awarded Ms Heard $2m in compensatory damages with no punitive damages.