A jury ordered Academy Award-winning filmmaker Paul Haggis Thursday to pay no less than $7.5 million to a lady who accused him of rape in one in all a number of #MeToo-era instances which have put Hollywood notables’ conduct on trial this fall. Jurors additionally plan to award further punitive damages.
Veering from intercourse to red-carpet socializing to Scientology, the civil courtroom trial pitted Haggis, recognized for writing finest image Oscar winners “Million Dollar Baby” and “Crash,” towards Haleigh Breest, a publicist who met him whereas working at film premieres within the early 2010s.
After hugging her legal professionals, Breest stated she was “very grateful” for the decision as she left courtroom. In a press release launched later, she stated she was grateful “that the jury chose to follow the facts — and believed me.”
Haggis stated he was “very disappointed in the results.”
“I’m going to continue to, with my team, fight to clear my name,” he stated as he left the courthouse along with his three grownup daughters. One had wept on a sister’s shoulder as the decision was delivered.
After a screening afterparty in January 2013, Haggis provided Breest a raise residence and invited her to his New York residence for a drink.
Breest, 36, stated Haggis then subjected her to undesirable advances and finally compelled her to carry out oral intercourse and raped her regardless of her entreaties to cease. Haggis, 69, stated the publicist was flirtatious and, whereas typically seeming “conflicted,” initiated kisses and oral intercourse in a completely consensual interplay. He stated he couldn’t recall whether or not they had intercourse.
After a day of deliberating, jurors sided with Breest, who stated she suffered psychological {and professional} penalties from her encounter with Haggis. She sued in late 2017.
While awarding her $7.5 million to compensate for struggling, the jury concluded that punitive damages must also be awarded. Jurors return Monday for extra courtroom proceedings to assist them determine that quantity.
The verdict got here weeks after one other civil jury, within the federal courthouse subsequent door, determined that Kevin Spacey didn’t sexually abuse fellow actor and then-teenager Anthony Rapp in 1986. Meanwhile, “That ’70s Show” actor Danny Masterson and former film magnate Harvey Weinstein are on trial, individually, on legal rape costs in Los Angeles. Both deny the allegations, and Weinstein is interesting a conviction in New York.
All 4 instances adopted the #MeToo upwelling of denunciations, disclosures and calls for for accountability about sexual misconduct, triggered by October 2017 information stories on many years of allegations about Weinstein.
Breest, particularly, stated she determined to sue Haggis as a result of his public condemnations of Weinstein infuriated her.
Four different ladies additionally testified that they skilled forceful, unwelcome passes — and in a single case, rape — by Haggis in separate encounters going again to 1996. None of the 4 took authorized motion.
The Associated Press usually doesn’t establish individuals who say they’ve been sexually assaulted until they arrive ahead publicly, as Breest has performed.
Haggis denied all the allegations. His protection, in the meantime, launched jurors to a number of ladies — together with ex-wife and former longtime “Dallas” forged member Deborah Rennard — who stated the screenwriter-director took it in stride once they rebuffed his romantic or sexual overtures.
During three weeks of testimony, the trial scrutinized textual content messages that Breest despatched to associates about what occurred with Haggis, emails between them earlier than and after the night time in query, and a few variations between their testimony and what they stated in early courtroom papers.
The two sides debated whether or not Haggis was bodily able to finishing up the alleged assault eight weeks after a spinal surgical procedure. Psychology specialists provided dueling views about what one referred to as widespread misconceptions about rape victims’ conduct, akin to assumptions that victims would don’t have any subsequent contact with their attackers.
And jurors heard in depth testimony in regards to the Church of Scientology, the faith based by science fiction and fantasy writer L. Ron Hubbard within the Nineteen Fifties. Haggis was an adherent for many years earlier than publicly renouncing, and denouncing, Scientology in 2009.
Through testimony from Haggis and different ex-members, his protection argued that the church got down to discredit him and might need had one thing to do with the lawsuit.
No witnesses stated they knew that Haggis’ accusers or Breest’s legal professionals had Scientology ties, and his legal professionals acknowledged that Breest herself doesn’t. Still, Haggis lawyer Priya Chaudhry sought to influence jurors that there have been “the footprints, though maybe not the fingerprints, of Scientology’s involvement here.”
The church stated in a press release that it has no involvement within the matter, arguing that Haggis is making an attempt to disgrace his accusers with an “absurd and patently false” declare. Breest’s legal professionals, Ilann Maazal and Zoe Salzman, have referred to as it “a shameful and unsupported conspiracy theory.”
The Canadian-born Haggis penned episodes of such well-known collection as “Diff’rent Strokes” and “Thirtysomething” within the Eighties. He broke into motion pictures with a splash with “Million Dollar Baby” and “Crash,” which he additionally directed and co-produced. Each movie gained the Academy Award for finest image, for 2004 and 2005 respectively, and Haggis additionally gained a screenwriting Oscar for “Crash.”
His different credit embody the screenplays for the James Bond motion pictures “Casino Royale” and “Quantum of Solace.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”