Kevin Spacey MUST pay $31M to ‘House of Cards’ makers for losses after they fired him over sex misconduct
Kevin Spacey must pay the makers of House of Cards over $31 million for alleged sexual misconduct behind the scenes of the Netflix drama 'House of Cards', a judge ruled on August 4, Thursday stating it was not even a "close case."
Spacey, now 63, played Frank Underwood on 'House of Cards' and was fired when claims that he sexually preyed on young men surfaced. The allegations, which included the alleged groping of a production assistant, prompted MRC to launch an investigation and, as a result, cancel his acting and producing contracts.
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The ruling comes after a private arbitrator determined in 2020 that Spacey had breached his contract by breaking the company's sexual harassment policy. MRC, the studio behind the successful Netflix series, severed relations with Spacey in 2017 after various claims of sexually predatory behavior against him surfaced. During the arbitration procedure, the firm successfully asserted that Spacey lost them millions of dollars since his alleged wrongdoing prompted them to remove him from the series and shortened the sixth season by five episodes.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mel Red Recana denied Spacey's request to overturn the arbitration verdict and approved MRC's motion, which means the actor must now pay the $30.9 million he was originally ordered to pay. "We are pleased with the court’s ruling," said MRC’s counsel Michael J Kump of Kinsella Weitzman Iser Kump Holley LLP in a statement to Deadline.
In her ruling, the judge wrote that Spacey and his lawyers "fail to demonstrate that this is even a close case" and "do not demonstrate that the damages award was so utterly irrational that it amounts to an arbitrary remaking of the parties' contracts," according to the court documents.
Spacey is still facing multiple other lawsuits from more than a dozen men, including actor Anthony Rapp, who initially accused Spacey of unwelcome sexual attempts on him when Rapp was 14 and Spacey was 26. Throughout the charges, Spacey has maintained his innocence.
The actor has recently begun to reappear in foreign films. While he will no longer act in filmmaker Péter Soós' upcoming historical movie '12:42: Gateway to the West', he is still scheduled to appear in projects such as Louis Nero's 'The Man Who Drew God', with the producer recently telling EW that he was unconcerned about the star's charges.