FAIRFAX, Va. (CN) — On three occasions, attorneys have tried without success to get Johnny Depp’s defamation case against his ex-wife tossed out of Fairfax County Circuit Court. Today, that effort may have reached an end.
In a ruling from the bench, Judge Penney Azcarate refused to allow lawyers for actress Amber Heard, Depp’s ex-wife, to petition the Virginia Supreme Court to weigh in on legal issues at the core of her last attempt to dismiss the case.
Essentially, the attorneys wanted the state’s high court to tackle whether case law supports their contention that the court should embrace findings from a United Kingdom court that Depp, 58, abused his ex-wife on a dozen occasions. This would have ended the Virginia case, which is based upon Depp’s charge that Heard, 35, defamed him by describing herself as a domestic abuse survivor.
In her opinion, Azcarate noted, “the defamation claim in the U.K. was based on completely different statements than the present case.” In her ruling today, Azcarate ticked through each legal standard required to send the case to the Virginia Supreme Court and concluded that the case didn’t qualify.
The judge’s decision “did not appear to be a close call,” Chew remarked.