The legal battle between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard continues forward and now a new player has entered the arena. Johnny Depp has enlisted a brand new attorney. Kathleen Zellner, known from Netflix’s Making a Murderer documentary, is now working for Depp for much the same reason she was part of that series, because she believes she is defending somebody who has been falsely accused.
Johnny Depp has been involved in multiple legal matters against his ex-wife Amber Heard in recent years and some of those are still outstanding. In November of 2020 Depp lost a libel lawsuit against a U.K newspaper which referred to him as a “wife-beater.” Amber Heard’s testimony was key to that verdict. A defamation lawsuit against Heard herself is currently pending in Virginia and is expected to go to trial later this year.
Most will know Kathleen Zellner from the second season of the Netflix documentary series Making a Murderer. She joined the legal fight of Steven Avery who was convicted of sexual assault in 1985. He served 18 years in prison before being released after his conviction was overturned.
In a statement to PageSix, Kathleen Zellner says that she is happy to be joining Johnny Depp’s “dream team” of lawyers and she references her history of defending those that have been wrongly accused, clearly equating the accusations of abuse against Johnny Depp with her other cases.
Johnny Depp lost his appeal on the U.K case back in March of last year, so it doesn’t appear that the focus of Depp’s new lawyer will be litigating that verdict, but rather focusing on the case coming up. In 2019 Amber Heard wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post in which she spoke of being a survivor of abuse. While she never mentioned any names in the article, it was widely believed that Heard was speaking about her marriage to Johnny Depp. He has now sued for defamation, claiming that Heard’s op-ed directly led to Disney’s decision to move forward with the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise without him.
The case has been delayed more than once as courts continue to deal with covid restrictions, but a Virginia court has now set the case to be heard in May. Amber Heard has also filed a countersuit for defamation against Depp. She claims she has been the victim of a smear campaign that has attempted to harm her career, including getting her removed from the cast of the Aquaman franchise. Her side has also attempted to get Depp’s suit tossed out of court on multiple occasions but the court has ruled against her team each time.
At the end of last year Johnny Depp’s side won access to Amber Heard’s phone. His team is arguing that photos of Heard showing bruises she allegedly received from Depp were doctored.