LOS ANGELES (AP) — A civil jury in California discovered Monday that Bill Cosby was chargeable for drugging and sexually assaulting a lady in 1972 and awarded her $19.25 million.
After a virtually two-week trial in Santa Monica, jurors discovered the 88-year-old Cosby chargeable for the sexual battery and assault of Donna Motsinger.
Cosby’s attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, stated in an e-mail that they’re disenchanted and totally intend to attraction the decision.
The choice got here almost 5 years after Cosby was freed from prison in Pennsylvania when the state Supreme Courtroom threw out a felony conviction primarily based on comparable allegations.
Motsinger had been a server at a restaurant in Sausalito close to San Francisco who stated in her lawsuit, filed in 2023, that Cosby had invited her to his stand-up comedy present at a theater in close by San Carlos. Each had been of their 30s on the time. She stated Cosby gave her wine and two capsules that she believed had been aspirin, and that she was going out and in of consciousness as two males put her in a limousine.
“She wakened in her home with all her garments off, besides her underwear on – no prime, no bra, and no pants,” the lawsuit stated. “She knew she had been drugged and raped by Invoice Cosby.”
In courtroom filings, Cosby’s legal professionals argued that the allegations rested virtually fully on hypothesis and assumption, saying Motsinger “freely admits that she has no concept what occurred.”
Jurors awarded Motsinger $17.5 million in previous damages and $1.75 million for future damages, together with “psychological struggling, lack of enjoyment of life, inconvenience, grief, anxiousness, humiliation, and emotional misery.” They deliberated for simply over a day.
They’ll award much more in a punitive damages part of the trial that begins later Monday.
Cosby didn’t testify on the trial, whose witnesses included Andrea Constand, the Temple College sports activities administrator he was convicted of sexually assaulting in a Pennsylvania felony courtroom in 2018. The state’s Supreme Courtroom threw out the decision and Cosby was free of jail after serving almost three years of a three- to 10-year sentence.
Motsinger first made her allegations anonymously in a 2005 lawsuit filed by Constand.
The Related Press doesn’t usually identify individuals who say they’ve been sexually abused except they arrive ahead publicly and consent to be named, as Constand and Motsinger have.
In 2022, a jury in Santa Monica awarded $500,000 to a lady who stated Cosby sexually assaulted her on the Playboy Mansion when she was a teen in 1975.
Motsinger’s lawsuit echoed allegations of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment made by a minimum of 60 ladies towards Cosby, all of which he has denied.
The previous stand-up comedy and tv celebrity as soon as extensively generally known as “America’s Dad” turned the first celebrity tried and convicted within the #MeToo period earlier than his conviction was completely thrown out when appeals courtroom discovered he gave incriminating testimony in a deposition solely after believing he had immunity from prosecution.
Andrew Dalton, The Related Press