A New York jury sided with Kevin Spacey in a $40 million civil lawsuit, finding that the Oscar-winning actor did not molest Anthony Rapp when he was a teenager and is not liable for battery. After roughly 80 minutes of deliberations, jurors reached their decision finding that Rapp’s lawyers had failed to prove that Spacey “touched a sexual or intimate part” of Rapp.
Rapp looked impassive as Judge Lewis Kaplan formally dismissed the case, Spacey dropped his head briefly. He later stood up and hugged Chase Scolnick, a member of his legal team.
Rapp first made his claims in a 2017 BuzzFeed article, in which he said that Spacey lifted him up, placed him on his bed, and pinned Rapp down in a sexually aggressive manner. The assault took place after a party at Spacey’s New York City apartment in 1986. Rapp was 14-years old at the time and Spacey was 26. The two met while appearing in Broadway productions — Rapp in “Precious Sons” with Ed Harris, Spacey in a Jack Lemmon-led revival of “Long Days Journey Into Night.” In court, Rapp called the event one of the “most traumatic” of his life.
But Spacey’s lawyers seized on inconsistencies in Rapp’s testimony. They noted, for instance, that Rapp described Spacey as having a separate bedroom, when a floor plan that they produced showed that he lived in a studio apartment with once central room. “The star witness of our case was the floor plan,” Jennifer Keller, an attorney for Spacey, said in her closing statements on Thursday.
They also argued that Rapp was upset that Spacey was not publicly gay and that he was consumed with jealousy over the actor’s Hollywood career. Rapp starred in the original Broadway production of “Rent” and appears on “Star Trek: Discovery.” Spacey starred in hit films such as “American Beauty” and “L.A. Confidential,” as well as the Netflix series, “House of Cards.”
Rapp’s side was dealt a blow earlier this week when Judge Kaplan ordered that an emotional distress claim be dropped from the case, declaring it redundant.
More to come…