Johnny Depp’s Second Defamation Trial Gets Underway in Virginia

variety.com:

Gene Maddaus Senior Media WriterAfter losing in a U.K. court in 2020, Johnny Depp will get a second chance to try to refute allegations that he abused ex-wife Amber Heard at a trial opening today in Virginia.Depp sued Heard in 2019 over an op-ed she published in the Washington Post in which she alluded to prior allegations against Depp, saying she had become “a public figure representing domestic abuse.”She did not identify Depp by name in the op-ed or go into any details of the abuse, instead focusing on the backlash she had endured since making the claims in 2016 and the work still remaining for the #MeToo movement.

But those six words prompted a $50 million claim from Depp, whose attorneys accused her of orchestrating an elaborate hoax in order to cripple his career.

That allegation — that she had concocted a hoax — in turn led her to file a $100 million counterclaim. Over the next six weeks, jurors in Fairfax, Va. — about 20 miles outside of Washington, D.C. — will hear witness testimony and review texts and photographs, and will ultimately have to decide who is telling the truth.

Jury selection begins today and opening statements could be heard on Tuesday.The trial will be broadcast on Court TV, and is expected to cause a media frenzy outside the Fairfax County Courthouse, where spectators will be lining up early in the morning to claim one of the few seats in Courtroom 5J.