A jury found Bill Cosby sexually assaulted in 1972, awarding him more than $19M US.
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A California judge on Monday found Bill Cosby guilty of drugging and sexually assaulting a woman in 1972 and awarded him $19.25 million US.
After a nearly two-week trial in Santa Monica, jurors found 88-year-old Cosby guilty of sexual battery and assault on Donna Motsinger.
Cosby’s attorney Jennifer Bonjean said in an email that they are disappointed and fully intend to appeal the decision.
The ruling came nearly five years after Cosby was released from prison in Pennsylvania when the state’s Supreme Court overturned a criminal conviction based on similar allegations.
Motsinger had been a server at a restaurant in Sausalito, near San Francisco, and claimed in his lawsuit, filed in 2023, that Cosby had invited him to his comedy show at a theater near San Carlos. Both were 30 years old at the time. She said Cosby gave her wine and two pills she believed to be aspirin, and she said she was passed out when two men put her in a limousine.
“She woke up in her house with all her clothes on, except underwear – no top, no bra, and no pants,” the lawsuit said. “She knew she was drugged and raped by Bill Cosby.”
A judge can award more punitive damages
In court filings, Cosby’s attorneys argued that the allegations are based on speculation and speculation, saying Motsinger “freely admits he doesn’t know what happened.”
Jurors awarded Motsinger $17.5 million in past damages and $1.75 million US in future damages, including “mental suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, inconvenience, grief, anxiety, humiliation and emotional distress.” They talked for more than a day.
They could award you even more in the punitive damages phase of the trial that begins later Monday.
Cosby did not testify at the trial, whose witnesses included Andrea Constand, the Temple University athletic director convicted of sexual assault in a Pennsylvania criminal court in 2018. The state Supreme Court overturned the decision and Cosby was released from prison after serving nearly three years of a three-to-ten-year sentence.
Motsinger first revealed his allegations anonymously in a lawsuit filed by Constand in 2005.
The Associated Press rarely names sexual assault victims unless they come forward and admit to being called, as Constand and Motsinger did.
In 2022, a Santa Monica jury awarded $500,000 US to a woman who said Cosby sexually assaulted her at the Playboy Mansion when she was a child in 1975.
Motsinger’s lawsuit comes amid allegations of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment made by at least 60 women against Cosby, all of which he denies.
The former celebrity singer and TV personality once widely known as “America’s Dad” became the first celebrity to be tried and convicted in the #MeToo era before his conviction was overturned when an appeals court found he had given chilling testimony after believing he was immune from prosecution.
