Summary: Bill Cosby’s legal battles are far from over.
While Bill Cosby’s criminal retrial is in the works, the elderly comedian is busy fighting in civil court.
According to Yahoo, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Craig Kaplan has scheduled a civil trial for July 30, 2018. A woman claims that the television star raped her at the Playboy mansion in 1974 when she was a teenager.
Plaintiff Judy Huth said that Cosby molested her in a bedroom when she was 15. The statute of limitations has already expired for a criminal case, but in California, victims of underage sexual abuse may file a civil lawsuit decades after the alleged incident.
Huth is being represented by Gloria Allred, a well-known feminist attorney who is also representing other Cosby accusers. She filed her civil suit against Cosby in 2014.
Allred told Rolling Stone that she did not believe Cosby’s mistrial would mean a loss for her client.
“There’s a higher burden of proof in a criminal case than there is in a civil case,” Allred said. “In a criminal case a prosecutor, any prosecutor, must carry the burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Recently, Cosby was tried in criminal court for the alleged rape of Andrea Constand, a Temple University employee who said she once viewed him as a “mentor.” After a highly-scrutinized trial, Cosby was released after the jury was unable to reach a unanimous decision.
The prosecutor in that case, Kevin Steele, vowed to retry the Constand case; and the judge in the Huth case set his trial far in advance to accommodate the criminal trial.
Constand and Huth are among the numerous women who have said that Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted them. Cosby has denied the allegations, and he has already provided a deposition for the Huth case that is currently sealed.
Huth alleges Cosby inflicted intentional and negligent emotional distress and committed sexual battery. She said that when she was a teenager, Cosby approached her and a 16-year-old friend while they were watching a movie being filmed. The star of The Cosby Show invited the girls to hang out at his tennis club the following Saturday, and he allegedly served the minors alcoholic drinks while they played pool.
Huth claimed that Cosby next invited her to the Playboy Mansion as a surprise, and he told her to lie about her age and say she was 19 to get in. She said that he directed her to a bathroom in a bedroom suite near the game room, and when she emerged from the bathroom, he was sitting on the bed. She said that he asked her to join him, and then he proceeded to molest her.
In Huth’s complaint, she called the act “childhood sexual abuse” and stated that it has psychologically damaged her.
Cosby’s publicist Andrew Wyatt told CBS News that the comedian will not make any public statements about the pending sexual assault lawsuits at this time.
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