Jury orders Filmmaker Paul Haggis to pay $7.5M in rape suit

NEW YORK — A jury ordered Academy Award-winning filmmaker Paul Haggis Thursday to pay at least $7.5 million to a woman who accused him of rape in one of several #MeToo-era cases that have put Hollywood notables’ behavior on trial this fall. Veering from sex to red-carpet socializing to Scientology, the civil court trial pitted Haggis, known for writing best picture Oscar winners “Million Dollar Baby” and “Crash,” against Haleigh Breest, a publicist who met him while working at movie premieres in the early 2010s. In a statement released later, she said she was thankful “that the jury chose to follow the facts — and believed me.” Haggis said he was “very disappointed in the results.” “I’m going to continue to, with my team, fight to clear my name,” he said as he left the courthouse with his three adult daughters. Still, Haggis lawyer Priya Chaudhry sought to persuade jurors that there were “the footprints, though maybe not the fingerprints, of Scientology’s involvement here.” The church said in a statement that it has no involvement in the matter, arguing that Haggis is trying to shame his accusers with an “absurd and patently false” claim. Breest’s lawyers, Ilann Maazal and Zoe Salzman, have called it “a shameful and unsupported conspiracy theory.” The Canadian-born Haggis penned episodes of such well-known series as “Diff’rent Strokes” and “Thirtysomething” in the 1980s.