Oscar-winning screenwriter Paul Haggis has been ordered to pay an additional 2.5 million dollars (£2.1 million) in damages in a rape lawsuit, bringing the total to 10 million dollars (£8.5 million) for a woman who said he sexually assaulted her nearly a decade ago.
Jurors decided on the additional, punitive damages after hearing evidence about Mr Haggis’s finances.
The same jury had already found that Mr Haggis raped publicist Haleigh Breest and forced her to perform oral sex in his New York apartment on January 31 2013.
He says they had a consensual encounter.
Ms Breest brought a civil lawsuit.
Mr Haggis was not criminally charged in the matter.
The jury sided with Ms Breest last week, awarded her 7.5 million dollars in compensatory damages for suffering and decided that she was also due punitive damages.
Jurors returned to court on Monday to work out the amount.
They got a quick course in movie financing as Mr Haggis was questioned about his earnings on such films as Oscar best picture winners Crash and Million Dollar Baby, and the James Bond movies Casino Royale and Quantum Of Solace.
While explaining the complexities of screenwriting compensation, he estimated that throughout his four decades in TV and movies he has made as much as 25 million dollars (£21 million) – before taxes, agents’ and other representatives’ fees and asset splits with his two ex-wives.
The 69-year-old filmmaker said during the trial that he had suffered various financial losses over the years – including the destruction of a poorly insured home in the 1994 Northridge earthquake – but that Ms Breest’s lawsuit wiped him out.
He said his legal bills topped 2.6 million dollars (£2.2 million), while his career abruptly dried up.
Except for some relatively small gigs rewriting scripts, Mr Haggis said: “I will never work as a writer until I clear my name.”
Ms Breest’s lawyers questioned Mr Haggis’s claims of being broke.
“Nothing Paul Haggis says can be trusted,” lawyer Ilann Maazel said.
Ms Breest, 36, said she suffered both professional and psychological harm from what happened after she accepted an invitation for a drink at his apartment following a movie premiere.
The Associated Press generally does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Ms Breest has done.
