Amber Heard says she’s settling Johnny Depp’s defamation suit

Actor Amber Heard announced Monday morning she would settle the defamation case brought by her ex-husband Johnny Depp. Heard announced the decision in an Instagram post that didn’t disclose any details of the settlement.

Depp sued Heard for libel over a December 2018 op-ed she wrote in The Washington Post describing herself as “a public figure representing domestic abuse.”

Heard called the settlement “an opportunity to emancipate myself from something I attempted to leave over six years ago and on terms I can agree to,” and she indicated it wasn’t an admission of guilt.

Heard called the decision to settle with Depp “very difficult” and followed “a great deal of deliberation.” 

“I have made no admission. This is not an act of concession,” she said in her statement. “There are no restrictions or gags with respect to my voice moving forward.”

There wasn’t any immediate reaction to Heard’s announcement on Depp’s social media accounts.  

Following a high-profile trial that exposed the inner workings of their troubled marriage, Heard was ordered to pay $10.35 million in June to the “Pirates of the Caribbean” star. The jury also awarded Heard $2 million in her countersuit.

Heard was appealing the Virginia jury’s decision, but she said Monday that even if her appeal was successful, the “best outcome” would be a retrial.

“I simply cannot go through that for a third time,” Heard said. She had previously testified in the U.K. about her domestic violence allegations when Depp unsuccessfully sued British newspaper The Sun for libel.

In Monday’s statement, Heard said she had “lost faith in the American legal system,” noting that in the U.K. she was “protected from having to give the worst moments of my testimony in front of the world’s media.”

Comparing the two trials, Heard said in the U.S. “my unprotected testimony served as entertainment and social media fodder … I was exposed to a type of humiliation that I simply cannot re-live.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.