Johnny Depp's representative warns against repeating 'defamatory' claims as Amber Heard says she can speak freely after the two settle lawsuit

• Amber Heard and Johnny Depp have settled their defamation lawsuit, Heard announced on Instagram.
• A jury found in June that they both defamed each other, but with a verdict tilting in Depp's favor.

Amber Heard and her ex-husband Johnny Depp have settled their defamation lawsuits against each other.

Heard wrote on Instagram that she was not admitting or conceding to anything and that there are "no restrictions or gags with respect to my voice moving forward."

A representative for Depp, however, told Insider that Heard's earlier losses in court could still be wielded against her.

"The judgment can still be used against her if she were again to repeat the false and defamatory allegations," the representative said in an email.

Heard's insurance company has agreed to pay Depp $1 million as part of the settlement, Depp's representative told Insider. A representative for Heard didn't immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment.

A Virginia jury in June found both Heard and Depp liable for defaming each other, but the verdicts weighed in Depp's favor. Throughout the trial, Depp's attorneys painted Heard as untrustworthy and, in the end, the jury largely sided with the movie star. Heard was found liable on all three of Depp's defamation complaints and ordered to pay him a little over $10 million in damages. Depp was found liable for one of Heard's defamation claims but was ordered to pay only $2 million in damages.

Both parties moved to appeal the verdicts against them, and Heard sued her insurer after it initially refused to pay the judgment and legal bills.

In a statement, Depp's attorneys Benjamin Chew and Camille Vasquez said they were "We are pleased to formally close the door on this painful chapter for Mr. Depp, who made clear throughout this process that his priority was about bringing the truth to light."

Chew and Vasquez took a swipe at Heard's failure to follow through on pledged donations to charities following her 2016 divorce settlement from Depp. Testimony at the trial earlier this year demonstrated that Depp and Elon Musk had paid much of the charity funds in her name.

"The jury's unanimous decision and the resulting judgment in Mr. Depp's favor against Ms. Heard remain fully in place," Chew and Vasquez wrote in the statement. "The payment of $1M — which Mr. Depp is pledging and will (actually) donate to charities — reinforces Ms. Heard's acknowledgment of the conclusion of the legal system's rigorous pursuit for justice."

A spokesperson said the charities would be named "at a later date."

Heard criticized the online harassment she faced because of the trial

Depp initially sued Heard in 2019, alleging she defamed him by describing herself in a Washington Post op-ed as a victim of domestic abuse, saying that she actually abused him. In a counterclaim, Heard described numerous instances when she says Depp abused her throughout their relationship, often while under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

Depp had lost a similar defamation suit against the UK-based tabloid The Sun in London, where Heard testified, but pressed forward with the lawsuit anyway.

"Even if my US appeal is successful, the best outcome would be a re-trial where a new jury would have to consider the evidence again," Heard wrote on Instagram. "I simply cannot go through that a third time."

The trial turned into a sprawling, two-month affair that was live-streamed online from a Virginia courtroom and became a culture-war flashpoint. Depp fans flooded the courtroom daily to support him and led online campaigns casting doubt on Heard's testimony.

In her statement, the actress slammed the way she was treated online during their six-week trial.

"The vilification I have faced on social media is an amplified version of the ways in which women are re-victimised when they come forward," she wrote on Instagram. "Now I finally have an opportunity to emancipate myself from something I attempted to leave over six years ago and on terms I can agree to."

Almost immediately after the June verdict, Heard's attorneys said she would not be able to pay Depp the judgment, and said she would appeal. She hired a new team of lawyers to appeal the case. Experts told Insider that her appeal brief had merit — particularly over arguments that the case should have been tried in California rather than Virginia, and that her therapist's notes — a feature in the UK trial — should not have been excluded from the evidence.

Heard's lawyers also argued in their brief that by finding Depp defamed Heard, jurors acknowledged that "Heard did not lie about being a victim of domestic abuse." And if that's the case, they can't also find she defamed Depp in her op-ed, they argued.

Brett Ward, co-chair of the matrimonial and family law practice at AmLaw 100 firm Blank Rome, agreed with Heard's lawyers, saying the inconsistent verdicts argument was the "most compelling" part of Heard's brief.

"It's kind of a logical inconsistency," Ward told Insider. Amber's "statements would have to be untrue for Johnny Depp to win, and Johnny Depp's lawyer's statements would have to be untrue for her to win. And it can't be both ways."

Instead of going through with the appeal, the parties arrived at a settlement. Heard said she had lost all faith in the US legal system and did not want to spend years more mired in the case

"I make this decision having lost faith in the American legal system, where my unprotected testimony served as entertainment and social media fodder," she wrote on Instagram. "When I stood before a judge in the UK, I was vindicated by a robust, impartial, and fair system, where I was protected from having to give the worst moments of my testimony in front of the world's media, and where the court found that I was subjected to domestic and sexual violence."