Bill Cosby is being sued by Judy Huth in Los Angeles Civil Court. The trial began Wednesday after a jury was selected last week.
Ms Huth has accused Mr Cosby, 84, of sexually abusing her as a teenager and charged him in 2014. But the civil suit was largely suspended while Mr Cosby faced criminal charges in another case in which he was charged with drugging. and the sexual abuse of Andrea Constand.
Cosby’s criminal conviction in the Pennsylvania Constand case was overturned by an appeals court last year and he was released from prison.
Ms Huth’s case is being followed by some of the many women who have accused Mr Cosby of sexual misconduct, in part because it is the first civil case in which Mr Cosby has been charged with sexual assault to go to trial.
mr. Cosby has denied sexually assaulting Ms Huth and the other women who made that charge against him, suggesting that sexual encounters were consensual.
The cases of sexual assault against Bill Cosby
After Bill Cosby’s 2018 criminal conviction for sexual assault was quashed, the first civil case in which he is accused of sexual misconduct has now been tried.
What does Mrs Huth say happened?
In court papers, Ms. Huth says she and a friend met Mr. Cosby in 1975 when they were walking to a movie set in a park in San Marino, California, where Mr. Cosby was shooting a movie.
Days later, at his invitation, they went to his tennis club, she says in court papers, where he gave her and her boyfriend alcohol before taking them to the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles. There, Ms Huth says in her lawsuit, he forced her to perform sexual acts with him in a bedroom. She says Mr. Cosby tried to put his hand down her pants and then forced her to caress him.
What does Mr. Cosby say?
Mr Cosby admits meeting Ms Huth at the Playboy Mansion but denies her allegation of sex acts and has challenged her claim that she was a minor at the time.
His lawyers have pointed out in court proceedings that Ms Huth’s memory of when the meeting took place has changed. She initially said it happened in 1974, when she was 15. But more recently, she came to the conclusion that it was in 1975, when she was 16, according to court papers. California law then and now states that a 16-year-old is classed as a minor, but Mr. Cosby has claimed that he didn’t meet Ms. Huth until several years later.
Why is this a civil process?
In 2014, when she filed the civil case, Ms Huth also reported her allegation to the police. But the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office declined to file criminal charges because the statute of limitations had expired.
Ms. Huth was able to sue because under California law, in some cases, the statute of limitations can be extended for adults who claim they were victims of sexual abuse as children, but suppressed the experience.
In 2020, California law was amended to further extend the statute of limitations for sexual assault charges in civil court.
State Mr. Cosby for other civil lawsuits?
The civil case is one of the last unresolved lawsuits against Mr. cosby.
He has already faced multiple other civil cases brought against him by women, many of whom sued him for defamation after his legal team dismissed their allegations of sexual misconduct by him as fiction. Eleven civil cases have ended in settlements, with 10 of the settlements being agreed upon by Mr Cosby’s former insurance company over his objections, his spokesman said.
Mr. Cosby also settled a civil suit that Ms. Constand filed against him in 2006 for $3.4 million.
Another pending civil suit was filed last year by Lili Bernard, an actor and visual artist, who accused him of drugging and sexually assaulting her at an Atlantic City hotel in 1990, when she was 26. mr. Cosby has declined her account. The Bernard case is still in its early stages.
Why was Mr. Cosby released from prison?
Cosby was found guilty in 2018 of drugging and sexually assaulting another woman, Andrea Constand, at his home near Philadelphia and received a three to 10 year sentence in the state prison.
But that conviction was quashed last year under a fair trial. An appeals court ruled that a “non-prosecution agreement” with a previous prosecutor meant that Mr Cosby should not have been charged in the case.
How does this civil case differ from the criminal case?
In this civil case in the Los Angeles Superior Court, the burden of proof is less than in a criminal trial. It will be before a 12-member jury, with at least nine of the 12 votes needed for a verdict. It is expected to take seven to ten days. Mrs Huth is demanding compensation.
Cosby has invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and will not testify and attend the trial, his spokesman said. Ms. Huth is expected to testify, as is the girlfriend who she said accompanied her to the Playboy Mansion in 1975.