Photo: Getty Images
Kevin Spacey has been ordered to pay $31 million to the television studio behind the Netflix show "House of Cards" after he was fired following sexual misconduct accusations.
Spacey played a lead role as Frank Underwood for five seasons. After the allegations surfaced, production was halted. Spacey's character had to be written out of the sixth, and final, season of the show and he was ultimately fired.
Now, arbitrators have ruled in favor of the production company, MRC. They have ruled that Spacey violated the terms of his contract and that he owes $31M for the breach of contract.
According to Deadline, the ruling was made last year, but the details of the ruling were kept confidential until Spacey was denied his motion for appeal.
The ruling states:
The Arbitrator found that Spacey’s conduct constituted a material breach of his acting and executive producing agreements with MRC, and that his breaches excused MRC’s obligations to pay him any further compensation in connection with the Show.
The Arbitrator further found that Spacey’s egregious breaches of contract proximately caused and rendered him (and his affiliated entities) liable for the tens of millions of dollars in losses MRC suffered when it had no choice, upon the revelations of Spacey’s pattern of harassment, to halt the production of Season 6 of the Show, to rewrite the entire season to omit Spacey’s character, and to shorten season 6 from 13 episodes to 8 to meet delivery deadlines.
Spacey filed a countersuit against MRC, claiming that he did not breach his contract and that he was actually owed money from the company. The claim was rejected.
Source: IGN