Kevin Spacey House of Cards Case Finally Hits Court for Trial

In November 2023, Media Rights Capital, the production company behind House of Cards, had its back against the wall. The court had just dismissed claims against MRC’s insurer over a nine-figure payout in connection with the sixth season of the show for the second time. There would be another bite at the apple but not a fourth, the judge overseeing the case warned. MRC needed a new legal strategy.

Enter Kevin Spacey, who was on the hook for over $31 million to MRC for breaching his contract by violating anti-harassment policies. There was some bad blood between the two sides, but Spacey had something the production company desperately needed in its case against insurer Fireman’s Fund: the star’s cooperation. Until that point, the court just wasn’t buying arguments that the actor was too sick to film. It was a major problem, one MRC likely couldn’t solve without Spacey in its effort to claw back some money from House of Cards‘ disastrous final season.

So the production company ended up striking a deal for him to turn state’s witness. In exchange for reducing the arbitration award to a paltry $1 million, Spacey agreed to turn over his medical records and provide a court declaration that he may have killed himself if he had to return for the final season of the show (further details are sealed). That admission changed the nature of the case. And now, a trial is underway that will decide whether MRC is owed upward of $100 million.

The question at the center of the case: What actually killed Spacey’s appearance from the sixth season of the show? If you ask MRC, it’s because of the actor’s sex addiction, which it maintains is a sickness that led to his unavailability after he checked himself into a luxe Arizona rehab facility. But if you ask Fireman’s Fund, it’s because of media fallout in response to allegations of sexual assault. A win for MRC will have major implications for production insurance coverage moving forward.

Under the policy, MRC was covered for losses in connection with a “sickness,” which wasn’t all that defined under the terms of the contract and will be a major focus of the trial. MRC had already produced five seasons of House of Cards starring Spacey, who by the end of the fifth seasons was President of the United States and running for re-election. And by the time the allegations against him surfaced, the first two episodes of the sixth had already been shot.

The timeline is important. To rewind: A BuzzFeed report published on Oct. 29, 2017 detailed alleged sexual abuse and assault by Spacey across several decades. It was an all hands-on-deck situation for MRC, which put the production on hiatus two days later. And on Nov. 2, CNN published a report accusing Spacey of sexual assault, this time involving crew members. With the blast radius of the allegations spreading, the actor checked himself into The Meadows, a $28,000-a-month rehab facility, that same day. At that point, MRC was operating under the belief that Spacey would be incapable of appearing for the sixth season and announced his suspension the next day.

But here’s where a chunk of the controversy arises. Spacey’s lawyer, Todd Rubenstein, told the production company on Nov. 4 that the actor was “available, willing and able to provide all of the services” required under his contract. That clashed with an earlier assertion from his agent, Matt DelPiano, to MRC CEO Scott Tenley a couple days earlier that Spacey was “sick” and going away for a “very long time,” at least six months. Ultimately, MRC scrapped the existing script and created an entirely new story arc, writing Spacey’s character out of the show completely.

How much weight will jurors give to Rubenstein’s posture that Spacey would leave rehab to film if MRC asked? We’ll see, but any good entertainment lawyer would’ve said the same to preserve their clients’ rights in this kind of situation, especially when there’s a pay-or-play obligation. Tenley certainly didn’t believe it. “Charitably, I believed [Rubenstein] was simply taking a legal position,” he said in a deposition.

In the trial, Fireman’s Fund will argue that MRC’s suspension of Spacey was a business decision. This is where Netflix comes into the fold. Under the distribution deal, it had what’s called “tiebreaker” rights over the scripts, storyline and casting. Netflix is alleged to have exercised those rights on Nov. 3 in the wake of the CNN report, with the company also declining to release Spacey starring-vehicle Gore around that time, per court filings. Fireman’s Fund says that the company threatened not to air new episodes of House of Cards if MRC stuck with Spacey, who was suspended later that evening. Indeed, Pauline Micelli, MRC’s former president of TV Legal and Business Affairs, testified that the tiebreaker rights had “everything to do with” the removal of Spacey’s character.

MRC, however, maintains Netflix never exercised those rights. Tenley in a deposition owned up to that decision, at one point answering in the affirmative when asked whether Spacey was a “monster with respect to the people he had victimized” and pointing to an unspecified complaint against the actor during the first season of the series.

One question jurors may have to weigh is whether Netflix effectively exercised its tiebreaker rights by threatening not to distribute new episodes even though it might not have formally exercised them. If so, they’ll probably buy arguments from Fireman’s Fund that Spacey wasn’t suspended because of any “sickness” but rather the potential blowback to allowing him to stay on.

During the trial, Spacey is expected to admit that he wasn’t able to work when the sexual assault allegations first surfaced despite his statements to the contrary in the immediate aftermath of the situation. He’ll likely testify that his illness required continued treatment. MRC has advanced a plethora of evidence it says demonstrates that Spacey couldn’t and shouldn’t have returned to the set during that period of his life.

That leads to what is essentially the hardest question the jury will face: Are MRC’s losses from the sixth season of the show directly linked to Spacey’s illness? The policy states that any loss must be “solely” caused by the sickness. That may sound like a winning issue for Fireman’s Fund, but courts have recognized that a condition can cause the problematic behavior at the core of an insurance dispute.

Consider a hypothetical insurance dispute involving Bruce Willis, who continued acting as his dementia got worse. If he was found in breach of his contract after forgetting lines or behaving inappropriately, it could be argued that his poor performance was the cause of that breach. An equally strong argument could be made that the dementia was the real cause because his actions are manifestations of his condition. That’s essentially what MRC is arguing here: Spacey’s conduct, his need for treatment and the risk he posed if he continued filming the sixth season were all direct results of his sickness.

Spacey taking the stand will grab the headlines, but a win for MRC on this point could have insurers scrambling to rework the fine print. After all, why should they carry all the risk of a production casting an actor with a history of sexual misconduct when it can just claim that any losses are due to a sex addiction?