Jack's next battle? Johnny Depp's lawyer fights actor's 'lifetime' Twitter ban after court victory
Johnny Depp won his defamation case against Amber Heard after a jury ruled overwhelmingly in his favor, but his lawyer Adam Waldman may be facing yet another battle against a "lifetime" ban on Twitter.
On June 1, a Virginia-based jury ruled in a unanimous decision that Heard, 36, defamed Depp, 58, when she called herself a victim of domestic abuse in a 2018 op-ed for The Washington Post. Heard was ordered to pay $15 million in damages, including $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages, but Judge Penney Azcarate reduced the punitive damages to $350,000 as per Virginia state law. The jury also awarded Heard compensatory damages of $2 million, agreeing to her claim of being defamed when Depp's lawyer Waldman called her abuse allegations a "hoax".
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Waldman was brought to court as a witness for Depp on Thursday, May 19. He previously made headlines in 2020 when he was dropped from Depp’s legal team after being accused of leaking confidential information related to Heard.
As reported by FandomWire, Waldman and Depp had a laugh during the former's testimony when he mentioned his "lifetime" ban from Twitter. The lawyer appeared in court via video link to address a question regarding the ban from Heard’s lawyer Elaine Bredehoft. Waldman told the court that Depp had continued to employ him as legal counsel and that he'd seen “evidence of things that show [Amber Heard’s] statements to be false.” The lawyer had previously defended the actor in his 2020 defamation lawsuit against The Sun after the British tabloid called him a "wife-beater."
Shortly after completing his testimony in court, he took to Instagram to share a screenshot of his Twitter ban and attached a quote from George Orwell's "Animal Farm" preface. "'Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need of an official ban. The Press is extremely centralized, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics.' -George Orwell’s Preface to Animal Farm, 1945," the quote read.
Waldman testified that he had sent several letters to the microblogging site to understand why he was banned. “To ask why I was suspended for life from their platform. And the response that I received was multiple violations of their policy,” he said. “So I asked, could they name one example of those multiple violations,” he continued. “And they responded by saying, now they were appealing without my asking them to do so … my suspension. That’s when they sent me another note that I was suspended for life.” Waldman's testimony received a positive response from many on social media, including statements from Elon Musk -- who is in the process of buying Twitter -- saying that the lawyer's credentials will be restored.
