Who paid for the consequences of the ACLU-authored, Amber Heard-signed op-ed? You did.

From the New York Post:

Multiple sources said the “Aquaman” star had to switch legal representation and is relying on her homeowner’s insurance policy to cover the cost of her current attorneys in the case.

The bill for Heard’s attorney has mostly been footed by The Travelers Companies under terms of the actress’s insurance policy, sources said.

A vice president of the insurance firm, Pamela Johnson, was spotted in the Fairfax, Virginia, court with Heard multiple times throughout her trial. Neither Johnson nor Travelers returned calls from The Post.

When your next homeowner’s insurance bill arrives, remember that part of the increase will be to cover the loss occasioned by the op-ed that the ACLU wrote.

(This post assumes that Amber Heard will never pay the judgment against her and that the legal bills, as is typical for American litigation, were in the same ballpark as the amount at issue, i.e., $10 million per side.)

Here’s a question: will Travelers sue the ACLU to get its money back? The words that the jury found to be defamatory were actually authored by the ACLU, not Amber Heard. (As noted in Don’t let the ACLU write your op-eds and other lessons from the Amber Heard libel trial, the ACLU has at least $750 million with which to reimburse Travelers.)

“Anatomy of a Hit Piece” by Asra Q. Nomani (former Wall Street Journal journalist) lays out a timeline and contains some email excerpts:

From the ACLU:

“I’d like your and Amber’s thoughts on doing an op-ed in which she discusses the ways in which survivors of gender-based violence have been made less safe under the Trump administration, and how people can take action.” .. “If she feels comfortable, she can interweave her personal story, saying how painful it is, as a GBV survivor to witness these setbacks.”

The op-ed that the jury found libelous was approved by all of the best legal minds of the ACLU, it seems, including the ACLU national legal director, David Cole. And, as it happens, the version that was published was actually toned down from the ACLU’s first draft.

If you want to know why your auto insurance rates are going up, see “Geico must pay $5.2 million to woman who got HPV from sex in man’s insured car, court rules” (NBC):

Geico must pay a Missouri woman $5.2 million after she caught HPV from unprotected sex with her then-boyfriend in his insured automobile, a state appellate court ruled.

The woman — identified in court papers only as “M.O.” — said that she “engaged in unprotected sexual activities in Insured’s vehicle” in November and December 2017 and that he “negligently caused or contributed to” her catching the human papillomavirus (HPV), a common sexually transmitted infection, court papers said.

I don’t understand how the above dispute could be sorted out by an arbitrator, court, or even Ketanji’s panel of biologists seeking to define “woman.” The only way to determine that a disease was transmitted in the insured vehicle would be to establish that the woman who suffered $5.2 million in damages (nearly as much as if she’d been killed) never had sex with anyone else anywhere else. The vehicle’s DNA is not going to be embedded in the HPV that is now living inside this woman. Science says “HPV is so common that nearly all sexually active men and women get the virus at some point in their lives” (CDC), which means that the typical person who has had sex has suffered $5.2 million in losses even if he/she/ze/they did not get sued by a child support profiteer.

Related:

• Who funded America’s opiate epidemic? You did.
• From the Journal of Popular Studies: Amber Heard (post-trial) goes DC/NY/DC in a private jet (via KTEB) instead of suffering the indignity of AMTRAK, a Toyota Camry, or JetBlue. That’s $5,000 per hour of the judgment that won’t be paid by Ms. Heard.