Legally, defamation means she willfully misrepresented the truth. To prove she did that in the WaPo article, which doesn’t mention Depp by name but simply refers to the fact that she was a victim of domestic violence, Depp’s lawyers would have had to prove with a “preponderance of evidence” that he *never* abused Heard. They absolutely did not demonstrate this. Their whole strategy was designed to cast her as an abuser and a liar. Which was not even really relevant. If she sincerely believed herself to be abused, even if the record showed a more complicated picture of mutual abuse, that wouldn’t rise to the level of defamation because she would not have been willfully and maliciously distorting the facts.
― treeship., Tuesday, 7 June 2022 13:31 (one year ago) link