💸 Kevin Spacey ordered to pay House of Cards producer MRC $31M

Two juries heard the cases against Kevin Spacey and ruled for him. An arbitrator and then a Los Angeles judge still ordered him to pay about $31M to Media Rights Capital, the company behind House of Cards, BBC News reported. Different rooms, different questions, different answers.

The jury rooms

A federal jury in Manhattan found Spacey not liable for battery in Anthony Rapp's civil suit, NBC News reported on October 20, 2022. Spacey told jurors under oath that Rapp's allegations 'are not true'. Rapp said in a statement on Twitter that he was grateful to have had his case heard.

In London, a jury at Southwark Crown Court found Spacey not guilty of seven counts of sexual assault and two counts of other serious sexual offenses, CNN reported on July 26, 2023. He had pleaded not guilty to all of them. Outside court he said he was 'humbled by the outcome'.

The room with no jury

MRC's claim was about a contract, not a crime. Variety reported that MRC argued Spacey owed it millions in lost profits because his misconduct forced it to remove him from the sixth season, which was cut from 13 episodes to eight.

The arbitrator ordered Spacey and two of his production companies to pay $29.5M in damages, $1.2M in attorneys' fees and $235,000 in costs, Forbes reported in November 2021. The ruling found a breach of contract over the show's sexual harassment policy. BBC News, summarizing the same award, put the figure at around $29.5M in damages plus $1.5M in costs and fees, and said it was handed down in October 2020.

Per Variety, the arbitrator watched videotaped deposition testimony from crew members and found Spacey violated MRC's sexual harassment policy with respect to five of them. Forbes reported that MRC's petition said more than 20 people were deposed and that the arbitrator 'found the allegations against Spacey to be true'. The award stayed confidential until MRC filed that petition on November 22, 2021, Variety reported.

The defense, and the denial

Spacey's lawyers asked the court to throw the award out. They argued that he 'participated in a pervasive on-set culture' of 'sexual innuendos, jokes, and innocent horseplay' but 'never sexually harassed anyone', Variety reported in January 2022. They also argued a timing point: Netflix executive Ted Sarandos had decided on November 2, 2017 that Spacey would not be in a final season, before the conduct the arbitrator relied on was known to Netflix. In their telling, the damages were already locked in.

The judge was not persuaded. Judge Mel Red Recana said Spacey and his legal team 'fail to demonstrate that this is even a close case', BBC News reported. MRC attorney Michael Kump said: 'We are pleased with the court's ruling.' Variety had already noted that courts tend to defer heavily to arbitrators. Forbes reported that a Spacey representative had not responded to its request for comment on the award.

The timeline

The bill next door

MRC was not the only company with a tab. Netflix took a charge of some $39M late in 2017 on projects tied to Spacey, Reuters reported in January 2018, citing a source with knowledge of the matter. Netflix described it as relating to 'unreleased content we've decided not to move forward with'.

The juries were asked whether Spacey was liable for battery and whether he was guilty of crimes. The arbitrator was asked whether he breached his contracts. On the public record, those questions got different answers, and only one of them came with an invoice.