Kevin Spacey has been told to pay the production firm behind House of Cards more than $30 million in damages.

The 62-year-old actor was dismissed from the program after a series of sexual assault claims were leveled against him. The actor has consistently denied any misconduct.

The arbitrators found that Spacey violated his contract’s demands for professional behavior by “engaging certain conduct in connection with several crew members in each of the five seasons that he starred in and executive produced House of Cards,” according to a document filed in Los Angeles Superior Court requesting a judge’s approval of the ruling.

Following a confidential appeal, the arbitration verdict was upheld.

The actor and his firms, M. Profitt Productions and Strigger Street Productions, were ordered to pay $29.5 million (£22 million) in damages to MRC.

Spacey and company will also have to pay $1.2 million (£898,014) in legal expenses and an extra $235,000 (£175,861) in costs.

To meet deadlines, MRC sacked Spacey and reduced the final season of House of Cards from 13 to eight episodes. In January 2019, MRC filed an arbitration demand, saying they lost tens of millions of dollars during the 2017 rewrite.

Spacey filed an appeal, and his motion was denied this month. Spacey’s lawyers contended that the actor’s conduct had no significant impact on the show’s losses.

Spacey also filed a counter-claim, claiming that the production firm had unlawfully terminated his contract and broken its contractual responsibilities to ‘pay or play.’

Following an eight-day hearing in February 2020, arbitrators made a private judgement in favor of MRC in July 2020.

“With one exception, the Arbitrator found the third party witnesses to be credible, and found the allegations against Spacey to be true,” the petition reportedly reads.

“The Arbitrator found that Spacey’s conduct constituted a material breach of his acting and executive producing agreements with MRC, and that his breaches excused MRC’s obligations to pay him any further compensation in connection with the show.”

The arbitrator also determined that ‘Spacey’s gross breaches of contract’ made him and his firms accountable for the tens of millions of dollars in additional expenditures incurred by MRC.

Spacey had appealed the original verdict to a panel of three more private arbitrators, who likewise ruled in favor of the studio, making the decision official – and public – on Monday.

“The safety of our employees, sets and work environments is of paramount importance to MRC and why we set out to push for accountability,” MRC said in a statement.

Anthony Rapp, who has acted in “Rent” on Broadway and in cinema, as well as “Star Trek: Discovery” on television, claims Spacey made a sexual approach on him when he was 14 years old at a party in the 1980s.

In the wake of the claim by Mr Rapp, Spacey gave a statement saying he had no memory of the encounter.

Spacey offered “the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behaviour”.

Several more accusers followed after. Some have filed lawsuits, including Rapp. Independent investigations revealed pervasive sexual harassment of his subordinates.