A California jury found Bill Cosby guilty of sexual assault in a civil trial on Monday, awarding Donna Motsinger $19.25m in damages. Motsinger alleged within the case that whereas working as a restaurant server in 1972, she was drugged and raped by Cosby after he gave her a glass of wine in his limousine.
Motsinger sued Cosby after California amended its legal guidelines to change the statutes of limitations on when accusers can file sexual assault circumstances. In remarks after the jury’s verdict, she described the trial as a five-decade-long effort to get justice.
Cosby, as soon as one of essentially the most profitable males in comedy and an leisure icon, has largely disappeared from public view up to now decade amid widespread allegations of sexual misconduct. In addition to the handfuls of girls who’ve accused Cosby of drugging and sexual assault, he has confronted a sequence of civil trials – together with Los Angeles county jurors in 2022 discovering that he sexually assaulted a 16-year-old lady on the Playboy mansion in 1975.
Cosby spent three years in jail after being convicted of sexual assault in 2018, however was released in 2021 after the next courtroom reversed the choice. The increased courtroom found that prosecutors had violated Cosby’s rights by promising not to cost him and then later pursuing a case in opposition to him.
A lawyer for Cosby said that he plans to attraction Monday’s verdict. He has denied a number of allegations from girls that he sexually assaulted them, sustaining that any encounters have been consensual. Cosby didn’t testify within the trial.
Motsinger, 84, filed her case in opposition to Cosby in 2023. She detailed her allegations in opposition to the entertainer in a grievance that said Cosby had lured and groomed her for assault, frequenting the restaurant that she labored at in Sausalito, California, and inviting her to attend one of his reveals in San Carlos, about an hour away.
“Defendant Cosby used his enormous wealth, power, fame, and prestige, giving women like Ms. Motsinger access to a world of celebrities and entertainers,” the grievance said.
While Motsinger was touring with Cosby to the present, the go well with alleged, he gave her a glass of wine. Shortly afterwards, Motsinger started to really feel sick and Cosby offered her with what she believed was an aspirin, in accordance to the go well with. Motsinger alleged that she then started to fall in and out of consciousness, finally waking up in her residence sporting solely underwear and figuring out she had been raped.
The jury in California dominated in favor of Motsinger after three days of deliberations, awarding her over $19m in addition to punitive damages, that are set to be decided in a while Monday.
