An arbitrator has decided that sexual harassment and misconduct claims against Kevin Spacey are credible—and that he now owes the producers of House of Cards almost $31 million. The ruling from October 2020 was made public Monday when production company MRC filed to have it upheld, Variety reports. An appeal from Spacey was denied earlier this month. Producers terminated Spacey's contract and wrote his character out of the show's final season after several accusations of sexual harassment and assault in 2017. They said the reports of on-set harassment violated company policies.
The arbitrator found that the actor's "egregious breaches of contract" made him liable for the costs of scrapping two House of Cards episodes already in production and rewriting the season. MRC said it also lost significant amounts of revenue because the sixth season had to be reduced from 13 episodes to eight to meet Netflix's deadlines.The ruling against Spacey and his companies included $29.5 million in damages and $1.4 million in legal fees and costs, per the Wall Street Journal. The arbitrator rejected Spacey's counterclaim that the allegations were not a breach of contract and he was fired for business reasons.
The Monday filing in Los Angeles Superior Court stated that MRC had investigated the allegations and found that he had breached workplace conduct rules. Attorneys took more than 20 depositions before the hearing last year. "With one exception, the Arbitrator found the third party witnesses to be credible, and found the allegations against Spacey to be true," MRC's filing said. (More Kevin Spacey stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
