The judge only had to determine if The Sun did their due diligence in getting corroboration on her claims, not whether they were true. I'll post what I posted earlier again:
Very interesting article by a Virginia lawyer about the case, including the UK case. The judge only had to determine if the paper did their due diligence to confirm the allegations, not whether they were completely true or not, for example. The location is tactical too, he could have sued her in the UK.
“As such, these two trials are about COMPLETELY DIFFERENT in all legal senses.
You see, Johnny Depp was suing a NEWSPAPER, and a newspaper is not REQUIRED to get everything right as a general rule when it comes to defamation trials. Instead, newspapers are generally safe, so long as they don’t do one of two things:
Purposefully get facts wrong that damages someone’s reputation [called “actual malice”], or
Not exercise due diligence in investigating whether the things they report are false [called “knew or should have known it to be false”].
So, when the judge in the UK was deciding if the various allegations were “substantially true,” what the UK judge was doing was seeing whether the newspaper was liable. The judge was also not determining anything like “75% of the abuse allegations are true, adding up to substantial truth” (more on that below). Instead, the point was to see if the Sun had good reason to believe that Johnny Depp was a “wife beater.”
And based on what Amber Heard had publicly stated, the Sun (without commenting on the general standards of that newspaper or the truthfulness of the allegations) had “good reason” to believe that Johnny Depp was a “wife beater.” Why? Because his ex-wife was throwing SERIOUS HINTS that he was a “wife beater” when they published the story. Amber Heard testified in that trial because she was A WITNESS, not because she was a defendant.
The judgement in the UK wasn’t making claims about whether Johnny’s alleged abuse of Amber Heard ACTUALLY did or did not happen. Instead, the question before the judge was whether the Sun had good reason to think so. And no matter what your opinion of Amber Heard or Johnny Depp is, Amber Heard is THE PERFECT person to serve as a witness to the alleged abuse by Johnny Depp.
Unless, of course…. ….she’s totally lying.”
https://jcalebjones.com/2022/05/17/the-johnny-depp-trial-explained-by-a-virginia-lawyer/