Sometime in the next few weeks, two-time Oscar winner Kevin Spacey likely will take the stand in Los Angeles Superior Court and tell jurors that he would have killed himself if he’d had to return for the sixth and final season of House of Cards. His testimony figures to be the centerpiece of a six-week insurance trial set to begin on January 20.

At stake is the huge payout that Media Rights Capital, the production company behind the first Netflix hit series, is seeking from its insurer, Fireman’s Fund. MRC argues that Spacey’s sex addiction caused trouble that led to his unavailability, which should have triggered its insurance policy, and that having to rewrite and produce the sixth season without the show’s leading man, as well as supposedly losing three proposed spinoffs, cost the company about $80 million in license fees and lost profits. MRC had promised to split any proceeds with Netflix.

Apart from the potential courtroom theatrics—recall Spacey’s ominous YouTube “cooking” video in the aftermath of his dismissal, which has 14 million views—the trial marks an unprecedented moment for Hollywood. Film and TV insurers have squabbled over just about everything—on-set deaths, natural disasters, Covid, even whether a missile fired into Israel counts as war. But as far as anyone in the industry I’ve spoken to can recall, no major entertainment insurance dispute has ever made it to trial. If MRC prevails, expect this victory to be treated as a legal watershed that encourages producers to push harder and forces insurers to rethink the fine print.

There’s no doubt that House of Cards was a huge success story, essentially inventing the idea of binge-watching when Netflix dropped the entire first season in 2013. Critical acclaim was immediate: David Fincher executive produced the adaptation of a U.K. political thriller and directed the first two episodes, and Spacey’s villainous Frank Underwood became iconic. Then in 2017, crewmembers on House of Cards accused Spacey of sexually aggressive behavior. As the scandal swelled, he checked into a $28,000-a-month rehab facility, and Ted Sarandos, then Netflix’s content chief, insisted Spacey be fired. The showrunners dutifully killed off Underwood during the break between Seasons 5 and 6, leaving his widow, played by Robin Wright, to prop up the show’s abbreviated final season.

Cue the lawyers. At the center of the current case is a provocative question: Is sexual compulsion a “sickness”? MRC’s insurance policy covers illnesses that render key castmembers unavailable, but doesn’t actually define “sickness.” As such, each side will present dueling psychological experts to weigh whether sex addiction is a legitimate condition.

There’s also the question of what really killed House of Cards. Was it Spacey’s condition, whatever the diagnosis may be, or was it Netflix’s aversion to bad headlines? If the jury believes Sarandos and Netflix were simply doing damage control, they may conclude that crisis management, rather than Spacey’s alleged mental state, was the proximate cause of the Season 6 debacle. Fireman’s Fund will in all likelihood push that defense, which certainly puts a unique spin on the #MeToo movement.

Sarandos won’t appear at trial, but his documented insistence that Spacey be cut from the show will figure prominently. So will the testimony from former Netflix executive Bryan Noon, MRC chief Scott Tenley, and Michael Robbins, the outside investigator that MRC hired to go to the Baltimore-based production and evaluate allegations against Spacey.

As I previously reported, the trial represents a remarkable gamble for MRC. After prevailing against Spacey in arbitration, the company was due $31 million in damages from him. (Spacey claims he’s broke; he recently popped up in Tel Aviv doing a cabaret act, so he may be telling the truth.) But to pursue the much larger claim against Fireman’s Fund, MRC forgave all but $1 million in exchange for the actor’s medical records and cooperation. With Spacey now on board, MRC is chasing not only $80 million in lost revenue and profits, but as much as $50 million in interest.