NEW YORK — Oscar-winning screenwriter Paul Haggis was ordered Monday to pay an extra $2.5 million in damages in a rape lawsuit, bringing the overall to $10 million for a girl who mentioned he sexually assaulted her almost a decade in the past.
Jurors selected the extra, punitive damages after listening to testimony about Haggis’ funds.
The identical jury had already discovered that Haggis raped publicist Haleigh Breest and compelled her to carry out oral intercourse in his New York condominium on Jan. 31, 2013. He says they’d a consensual encounter.
Breest introduced a civil lawsuit. Haggis wasn’t criminally charged within the matter.
The jury sided with Breest final week, awarded her $7.5 million in compensatory damages for struggling and determined that she was additionally due punitive damages. Jurors returned to courtroom Monday to work out the quantity.
They received a fast course in film financing as Haggis was questioned about his earnings on such movies as Oscar finest image winners “Crash” and “Million Greenback Child,” and the James Bond flicks “On line casino Royale” and “Quantum of Solace.”
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Whereas explaining the complexities of screenwriting compensation, he estimated that all through his 4 a long time in TV and flicks, he’s made as a lot as $25 million – earlier than taxes, brokers’ and different representatives’ charges and asset splits along with his two ex-wives.
The 69-year-old filmmaker mentioned throughout the trial that he’d suffered numerous monetary losses through the years – together with the destruction of a poorly insured residence within the 1994 Northridge earthquake – however that Breest’s lawsuit wiped him out. He mentioned his authorized payments topped $2.6 million, whereas his profession abruptly dried up.
Apart from some comparatively small gigs rewriting scripts, Haggis mentioned, “I’ll by no means work as a author till I clear my identify.”
Breest’s attorneys questioned Haggis’ claims of being broke.
“Nothing Paul Haggis says might be trusted,” lawyer Ilann Maazel mentioned.
Breest, 36, mentioned she suffered each skilled and psychological hurt from what occurred after she accepted an invite for a drink at his condominium following a film premiere.
The Related Press typically doesn’t determine individuals who say they’ve been sexually assaulted except they arrive ahead publicly, as Breest has carried out.
