Jurors also plan to award additional punitive damages. The civil court case pitted Haggis, known for writing the Best Picture Oscar winners Million Dollar Baby and Crash, against Haleigh Breest, a journalist who met him while working on movie premieres in the early 2010s. After an after-party for the screening in January 2013, Haggis offered Brest a lift home and invited her to his New York apartment for a drink. Breest, 36, said Haggis then subjected her to unwanted effects and eventually forced her to perform oral sex and raped her despite her pleas to stop. Haggis, 69, said the journalist was flirtatious and, while sometimes appearing “conflicted”, initiated the kissing and oral sex in a completely consensual interaction. He said he could not remember if they had had sex. After a day of deliberations, jurors sided with Breest, who said she suffered psychological and professional consequences from her encounter with Haggis. He sued in late 2017. While awarding her US$7.5 million in damages for suffering, the jury concluded that punitive damages should also be awarded. Jurors return Monday for more court proceedings to help them decide that amount. After hugging her lawyers, Breest said she was “very grateful” for the verdict as she left court. In a statement released later, he said he was grateful “that the jury chose to follow the facts — and believe me.” Haggis said he was “very disappointed with the results”. “I will continue, with my team, to fight to clear my name,” he said as he left the courthouse with his three adult daughters. One had cried on a sister’s shoulder as the verdict was delivered.
Other #MeToo cases
The verdict came weeks after another civil jury, in federal court next door, ruled that Kevin Spacey did not sexually assault then-teenage actor Anthony Rapp in 1986. Meanwhile, That ’70 Show actor Danny Masterson and former movie mogul Harvey Weinstein are on trial, separately, on criminal rape charges in Los Angeles. Both deny the allegations and Weinstein is appealing a conviction in New York. All four cases followed the #MeToo surge in sexual harassment allegations, revelations and demands for accountability, sparked by October 2017 news reports about decades-old allegations against Weinstein. Breest, in particular, said she decided to sue Haggis because his public condemnations of Weinstein angered her. Journalist Haleigh Breest, left, arrives at a New York court on Nov. 2, 2022. (Julia Nikhinson/The Associated Press) Four other women also testified that they experienced violent, unwanted cards — and in one case, rape — from Haggis in separate encounters dating back to 1996. None of the four took legal action. The Associated Press generally does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Breest did. Haggis denied all the allegations. His defense introduced jurors to several women — including ex-wife and former Dallas cast member Deborah Renard — who said the writer-director took it easy when they rejected his romantic or sexual advances. During three weeks of testimony, the trial examined text messages Breest sent to friends about what happened to Haggis, emails between them before and after the night in question and some discrepancies between their testimony and what they said in the first court documents. The two sides debated whether Haggis was physically fit to carry out the alleged attack eight weeks after undergoing spinal surgery. Psychological experts offered dueling perspectives on what one called widespread misconceptions about the behavior of rape victims, such as assumptions that victims would have no follow-up contact with their perpetrators.
Scientology in focus
Jurors also heard extensive testimony about the Church of Scientology, the religion founded by science fiction and fantasy author L. Ron Hubbard in the 1950s. Haggis was an adherent for decades before publicly disavowing — and denouncing — Scientology in 2009. Through testimony from Haggis and other former members, his defense argued that the church intended to defame him and may have had something to do with the lawsuit. No witness said they knew Haggis’ accusers or Brest’s lawyers had Scientology ties, and his lawyers acknowledged that Brest herself has none. But Haggis’ lawyer, Priya Chaudhry, tried to convince jurors that there were “the traces, though perhaps not the fingerprints, of Scientology involvement here.” The church said in a statement that it had no involvement in the matter, arguing that Haggis was trying to embarrass his accusers with an “absurd and patently false” allegation. Breest’s lawyers, Ilann Maazal and Zoe Salzman, have called it a “disgraceful and unsupported conspiracy theory”. Canadian-born Haggis wrote episodes of popular series such as Diff’rent Strokes and Thirtysomething in the 1980s. He broke into films with Million Dollar Baby and Crash, which he directed and co-produced. Each film won the Academy Award for Best Picture, in 2004 and 2005 respectively, and Haggis also won a screenplay Oscar for Crash. His other works include the scripts for the James Bond films Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace.
