(Updated 2 p.m. 11/25/19: State District Judge John Chupp awarded about $370,000 in defense attorney’s fees and sanctions against Vic Mignogna on Monday. The sanctions portion of that total is $15,000. The award, which also covers anticipated appellate costs, is less than half of the $800,000 requested by defense lawyers at Thursday’s hearing.)

Anime voice actor Vic Mignogna took the stand Thursday for the first time — weeks after he lost round one of his defamation lawsuit — and steadfastly maintained that his legal action was the last resort of a man desperate to save his career.

The Grapevine-based actor and “Dragon Ball” star, long hounded by allegations of inappropriate behavior toward women, filed suit in April against his former employer, two Dallas-area colleagues and the fiancé of one of the women.

Almost immediately after state District Judge John Chupp dismissed the last of Mignogna’s 17 claims Oct. 4, his legal team made clear that an appeal is coming. But before that can happen, both sides had to return to Chupp’s courtroom Thursday to hear arguments on the awarding of defense lawyer fees and possible sanctions against the actor.

At day’s end, Chupp indicated he would rule as early as Friday on the requests, which total about $800,000.

The defense team subpoenaed Mignogna as part of its strategy, but my sense was that the actor’s testimony helped his own cause far more than it hurt it.

Defense attorney Sean Lemoine was unable to shake Mignogna from his earnestly delivered narrative: The voice actor trusted his lawyer so completely that he has never read the lawsuit filed on his behalf. He has never watched a minute of the YouTube screeds of a Minnesota lawyer who set up a GoFundMe legal campaign on his behalf.

He even maintained he doesn’t know his own net worth.

Vic Mignogna, left, sits beside attorney Ty Beard during a hearing in the 141st state District Court at the Tom Vandergriff Civil Courts Building in Fort Worth on Thursday. (Lawrence Jenkins / Special Contributor)

After the January premiere of his latest film, Dragon Ball: Broly, Mignogna testified, he quickly realized that people were again tweeting about his alleged misdeeds. Longtime allegations on social media have described the actor’s aggressive kisses, hugs and unwanted sexual advances.

“I was really scared,” he said in court Thursday, “but I felt like I had to do something. I had seen this all spiraling so badly over a couple of months that I decided I had no other recourse to save whatever career or reputation I had left.”

Mignogna contended that before filing the lawsuit, he even considered asking the advice of fellow voice actor Monica Rial, one of the women he would eventually sue along with Rial’s fiancé, Ron Toye, Jamie Marchi and Flower Mound-based Funimation.

But then, he recounted, Rial and Marchi also tweeted about his behavior. “It just kept getting worse and it kept getting worse. I didn’t feel I had any other choice,” Mignogna said.

Many of the question-and-answer sequences between Mignogna and Lemoine — punctuated by many objections by the voice actor’s legal team and upheld by Chupp — ended with little satisfaction for either side.

Repeatedly Lemoine asked: “Is it fair to say that you need to file a lawsuit to shut people up?”

After answering the question several times with a polite but vehement “no,” Mignogna responded, “No sir, they had been speaking out for months. There was no shutting anyone up.”

Much of the Thursday hearing involved hours of dry, detailed testimony about the defense lawyers’ bills: data points on reasonable rates, block billing, timekeepers and time sheets.

But once Mignogna took the stand, things got interesting. I’ve been writing about his case since August, but because he and his defense team never agreed to talk to me, this was my first time to hear him in person.

The 57-year-old voice actor was careful with his words but mostly came across as authentic.

As previewed in the defense lawyers’ filings, the goal was to prove that Mignogna’s claims were filed in bad faith, that he was aware that the cancellation of invitations to anime conventions was not caused by the defendants and that the lawsuit, in tandem with a strategy of using a Minnesota lawyer as a “hate megaphone,” illustrated his vindictiveness.

Mignogna acknowledged that he had no direct evidence related to who was behind the convention cancellations, but he said he believed they were linked to the defendants based “on things I had heard at the time.”

But the defense team had far less success on their other two points.

Lemoine questioned Mignogna again and again about whether he hatched a plan with Minnesota lawyer Nick Rekieta for Mignogna to file the defamation lawsuit and Rekieta to follow up by creating the GoFundMe account.

After many questions, Mignogna eventually conceded that he thanked Rekieta for setting up the account, but he denied any other involvement. “I don’t have control over one single penny of the account,” he said.

Ron Toye and Monica Rial, two of the four defendants whom anime voice actor Vic Mignogna filed a defamation lawsuit against were among those in the courtroom Thursday. (Lawrence Jenkins / Special Contributor)

As of Thursday night, the GoFundMe page stood at about $262,000 from about 6,600 supporters.

Mignogna contended that he “didn’t feel great” about Rekieta setting up the fund but the lawyer told him, “ ‘Listen, you have a lot of people who care about you and feel like you are being wrongly accused and they want to help. Allow them to help.’”

He also pointed out that he has no control over Rekieta’s harsh language regarding the defendants. In one online commentary, Rekieta said, “I think they’re terrible people and I want to see them ground into dust.”

“I just assume he [Rekieta] does whatever he wants to do,” Mignogna told the court. “I’m not responsible for what Rekieta says.”

Asked whether he considers Rekieta a friend, Mignogna responded, “I foolishly consider everyone I know a friend.”

Throughout the day, Chupp showed little patience with the defense team’s efforts to link Rekieta and the GoFundMe account to the issues before the court. At one point, the slightly exasperated judge asked the defense, “Why are we complaining about stuff that’s on the internet? Let’s try to get to something relevant.”

The sanctions and fees filings on behalf of Marchi, Rial and Toye referenced the damage to their lives since the lawsuit was filed: Reduction in recording and convention work, harassment, doxing and death threats, online attacks and smear campaigns.

Those concerns were hardly referenced during Thursday’s hearing, so who knows how they will figure into Chupp’s decision-making. He may well decide that, although the plaintiff didn’t meet the bar for winning his lawsuit, that doesn’t mean any sanctions are in order.

Featured at the top of the defense filing on behalf of Rial and Toye was a photograph of Mignogna, Rekieta and Mignogna attorney Ty Beard, posing with their cigars at an Anime Matsuri convention this year.

Underneath the photo is a quote in which Beard, just after Chupp’s Oct. 4 dismissal of the final claims, said, “What I’m saying is we have already won a victory … The only question is how big of a victory are we going to win.”

The defense filing contends that the “victory” was the avalanche of vitriol directed at victims and critics. The defendants’ lawyers want to see Chupp pop Mignogna hard enough to deter him from any future unsubstantiated lawsuits.

Now it’s up to Chupp to decide, even though Mignogna didn’t win, was he negligent or acting in bad faith? We’ll likely get that answer before the weekend.