A decide in California has ordered Bill Cosby or his attorneys into court docket subsequent month to handle questions on his property as a lady who sued him for sexually assaulting her seeks to implement cost of a $59 million judgment she was awarded earlier this 12 months.
In March, a civil jury made the award after discovering that Mr. Cosby had drugged and sexually assaulted the lady, Donna Motsinger, a former waitress at a Sausalito restaurant, after escorting her to certainly one of his comedy reveals in 1972.
In court docket papers, attorneys for Ms. Motsinger stated Mr. Cosby, 89, hasn’t paid something towards the judgment and, citing financial institution data, raised concern that previously he and his household had moved property round in a means that would hinder their means to acquire the judgment.
“Cosby has paid none of the judgment, while showing a clear record of liquidating assets and then immediately dissipating the proceeds,” Ms. Motsinger’s attorneys wrote in court docket papers.
Lawyers for Mr. Cosby didn’t reply to a request for remark.
A listening to within the effort to implement the judgment had initially been scheduled for January in Los Angeles Superior Court. But Ms. Motsinger’s attorneys, citing the monetary transactions outlined within the court docket papers, requested the decide within the case, Bradley S. Phillips, to transfer up the date. In an order issued Tuesday, the listening to was set for September.
Mr. Cosby has constantly maintained that any sexual contact he had with ladies was consensual. He has lodged an attraction of the trial discovering.
Judgments develop into due on the time they’re awarded, although enforcement of them is left to the get together who received to prepare. The attorneys for Ms. Motsinger wrote within the grievance that Mr. Cosby had failed to reply to post-judgment questions meant to determine his property.
One of the attorneys, Jesse Creed, detailed monetary transactions in court docket papers that, whereas they occurred earlier than the award of the judgment, have been indicative, he argued, of an effort to switch property in ways in which might stop them from being topic to an enforcement motion. For instance, he cited financial institution data obtained by subpoena that confirmed that proceeds from the sale of a New York townhouse have been wired right into a Cosby account final November and inside 48 hours, $1.29 million was transferred to different accounts, together with these belonging to pals.
Though dozens of girls have come ahead to accuse Mr. Cosby of sexual abuse, he was solely criminally charged in a single case. He was convicted, however in 2021 that conviction was overturned for procedural causes after Mr. Cosby had served three years of a three- to 10-year sentence at a jail outdoors Philadelphia.
In that case, he was convicted of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand, a former Temple University worker to whom Mr. Cosby had develop into a mentor. He was freed after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court dominated {that a} “non-prosecution agreement” with a earlier prosecutor meant he mustn’t have been charged.
Mr. Cosby promoted the Pennsylvania Supreme Court resolution as a full exoneration, and through the years, Mr. Cosby’s attorneys have depicted him as somebody who unfairly turned a goal of the feelings stirred by the #MeToo motion.
But the Motsinger case is certainly one of two latest civil court docket findings that reinforce a picture of him as an individual who wielded his celeb to benefit from ladies.
Following his launch from jail, Mr. Cosby was the topic of a civil trial in 2022 introduced by one other accuser, Judy Huth. In that case, the jury discovered that Mr. Cosby had sexually assaulted Ms. Huth in 1975, when as a 16-year-old woman she accepted his invitation to be a part of him on the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles.
In Ms. Motsinger’s lawsuit, she described how Mr. Cosby had attacked her after they have been each of their 30s, after giving her wine and a capsule that had left her incapacitated. Mr. Cosby didn’t testify on the trial.
Years in the past, Ms. Motsinger’s case would have been time-barred as a result of she didn’t make the accusation till after the expiration of the statute of limitations for such fits. But her case turned doable as a result of California is among the many states which have amended the statutes in sexual assault circumstances so accusers can come ahead even after a prolonged passage of time.
Mr. Cosby says he has just lately run into monetary difficulties. During a deposition within the Motsinger case, he described being unable to get the high-profile work he as soon as loved as a comedy star whose tv sequence “The Cosby Show” turned a serious success.
But an professional witness Ms. Motsinger’s attorneys referred to as to the stand earlier than the jury’s last resolution this 12 months estimated that Mr. Cosby was value roughly $128 million.