“They [ACLU] were responsible for drafting and placing the op-ed that the Virginia jury just found to be defamatory to Mr. Depp,” Meyers also claimed.
The ACLU’s lawyer, Stephanie Teplin, said that the $86,000 was a reasonable amount since the Depp team requested thousands of documents over six years.
They argued that the requested fee was for the “considerable expense spent responding to onerous subpoenas served by Mr. Depp from an underlying action in which neither the ACLU nor any of its employees are parties,” according to Teplin.
Newsweek reported that an ACLU spokesperson said, “We are pleased that the Court recognized that the ACLU complied with Mr. Depp’s requests and did so at great expense.”
Depp vs. Heard
After she and Depp divorced, Amber Heard wrote a 2018 op-ed that was co-written by the ACLU. The article appeared in The Washington Post, with the headline, “I spoke up against sexual violence—and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change.”
Heard was touted by the organization as an “Ambassador for women’s rights, with a focus on gender-based violence.”
