Paul Haggis, the Oscar-winning filmmaker, agreed to pay nearly $2 million to settle a civil suit from a former film-industry publicist who in 2022 won a rape trial against him.
The lawsuit, which the publicist, Haleigh Breest, filed in the early months of the #MeToo movement, said that in 2013 Mr. Haggis invited her to his loft in downtown Manhattan, where he forced her to give him oral sex, penetrated her digitally and raped her.
Mr. Haggis, who won two Oscars for “Crash” (2004), which he co-wrote and directed, was initially ordered to pay Ms. Breest at least $7.5 million.
The settlement, which was signed last month, said that both parties had “amicably resolved all disputes” between them and that Ms. Breest would file a legal document known as a satisfaction of the amended judgment, indicating that the required amount had been paid. Under the terms of the settlement, Mr. Haggis agreed to pay Ms. Breest $1.9 million.
Lawyers for Mr. Haggis and Ms. Breest did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Saturday.
Mr. Haggis, who did not face criminal charges in the case, maintained that the sexual encounter with Ms. Breest had been consensual.
After a 15-day trial in Manhattan Supreme Court in the fall of 2022, a six-person jury sided with Ms. Breest, finding Mr. Haggis liable for rape. Ms. Breest had testified that she had felt pressure to go to Mr. Haggis’s apartment and have a drink that night because of his stature in Hollywood.
At the time, Ms. Breest said in a statement that she was grateful for the opportunity to seek justice and accountability in court. Priya Chaudhry, a lawyer for Mr. Haggis, said at the time that the defense was “disappointed and shocked” by the trial’s outcome.
During the trial, lawyers for Ms. Breest sought to convince jurors that her communications shortly after the sexual encounter made clear that she had viewed it as an assault. The defense zeroed in on messages from Ms. Breest that took a more lighthearted tone, along with others that expressed her desire to see Mr. Haggis again.
His lawyers also argued that Ms. Breest was lying about the encounter to extract money from the filmmaker during a time when the #MeToo movement had heightened public sensitivity around sexual-assault allegations. They pointed to a text in which she told a friend, “I need to get something out of this at least.”
Ms. Breest began her case against Mr. Haggis shortly after he denounced Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced film producer, as numerous accounts of his sexual harassment and abuse were published in The New York Times.
During the trial, Ms. Breest testified that Mr. Haggis was the “definition of hypocrisy.”
Georgia Gee contributed research.
Derrick Bryson Taylor is a Times reporter covering breaking news in culture and the arts.
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