Judy Huth was a teenager when she met Bill Cosby, as she recounts in court papers. It was the mid-1970s, and Mr. Cosby had already had his breakthrough on the TV series “I Spy” and become a movie star, but was still years away from his huge success on “The Cosby Show.” Ms. Huth and a friend spotted him on a film set in a park in San Marino, Calif., and ended up meeting him in person, according to her court filings.
Days later, she asserts in the filings, she went to Mr. Cosby’s tennis club at his invitation, where he gave her and her friend alcohol before taking them to the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles, where she accuses him of forcing her to perform a sex act on him in a bedroom. Since 2014, Mr. Cosby described her account as a fabrication.
This week the job of deciding who is credible will fall to a jury in Los Angeles Superior Court, as the civil trial of Mr. Cosby on Ms. Huth’s accusations that he sexually assaulted her is scheduled to get underway.
Ms. Huth’s recollection regarding when the encounter occurred has changed. She initially stated that it took place in 1974, when her age was 15. Court papers later revealed that she had concluded that it actually happened in 1975, when she was 16. She has stated in court papers that she recalls Mr. Cosby telling them and her friend, “If asked at the mansion, they would both claim to be 19”.
The change of dates has led Mr. Cosby’s team to further dispute her account. Andrew Wyatt, a spokesman for Mr. Cosby, said in a statement that Ms. Huth had “made inconsistent statements since the inception of filing this civil suit against Mr. Cosby.” Ms. Huth has said that recently released information supplied by Mr. Cosby’s team had led her to reconsider what year it occurred.
The civil case, which was one of the last unresolved lawsuits against Mr. Cosby’s, was largely put off while Pennsylvania prosecutors pursued his criminal case. He was convicted of drugging Andrea Constand and sexually assaulting her in 2018. The conviction was overturned. Mr. Cosby was released last year after an appeal panel found that his due-process rights had been violated by the prosecutors who ignored an assurance from a previous district attorney that Mr. Cosby wouldn’t be prosecuted.
With the criminal case overturned, the significance of Ms. Huth’s suit has risen in the minds of some of the many women who have accused Mr. Cosby of being a sexual predator.
“I think that Judy’s trial may be our last stand for justice and seeing accountability come to fruition in our stand against Bill Cosby,” Victoria Valentino, who says Mr. Cosby drugged and raped her in Los Angeles in 1969, said in a text. (Mr. Cosby denies all allegations of sexual assault and stated that any encounters were consensual. She stated that she will attend part of the trial. Barring a last-minute settlement, jury selection is expected to begin this week with opening arguments expected June 1.
Patricia Steuer, who accuses Mr. Cosby in 1978 and 1980 of drugging and attacking her, stated that she saw a Huth civil trial to be a chance to obtain some justice. “There is no other recourse at the moment,” she said. “It probably is the only avenue available.”
Now 84, Mr. Cosby has been the subject of multiple civil cases brought against him by women. Many of them sued him for defamation after his legal staff dismissed their allegations of sexual misconduct. Eleven civil cases ended in settlements, with 10 of the settlements having been agreed to by Mr. Cosby’s former insurance company over his objections, according to his spokesman.
Ms. Huth’s lawsuit is poised to become the first civil case accusing Mr. Cosby of sexual assault to reach trial. Ms. Huth stated in court papers that Mr. Cosby attempted to pull her pants down in a bedroom at Playboy Mansion and then forced her into sex.
Ms. Huth filed her lawsuit in December 2014. This was at a time when many women were making allegations against Mr. Cosby that he had sexually assaulted and drugged them in multiple decades.
She also reported her accusation to the police, but the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office declined to file criminal charges because the statute of limitations had passed.
Her lawyers argued the civil claim period had not expired. However in California, it is extended for adults who claim to have been victims of sexual abuse as minors and who then suppress the experience. Her lawyers stated that the deadline to file a civil suit for such abuse is determined by when the victim becomes aware of its severe psychological impact.
2020 California law was amended in order to extend the statute-of-limitations for sexual assault cases in civil court.
Ms. Huth’s revised timeline, which says Mr. Cosby assaulted her when she was 16 rather than 15, should not affect her ability to pursue the suit since the law views a 16-year-old as a minor, Ms. Huth’s lawyer, Gloria Allred, said.
Mr. Cosby’s lawyers argued in legal papers that they felt ambushed by the sudden change in Ms. Huth’s account. They said that their research had been geared toward establishing Mr. Cosby’s and Ms. Huth’s whereabouts in 1974, and said they had prepared evidence to show that the entertainer was not at the Playboy Mansion in the period she suggested in 1974.
Log books from the Playboy Mansion for 1974 do not list either Ms. Huth or her friend as having visited, according to Mr. Cosby’s lawyers.
The judge asked Playboy for records for 1975 at a hearing last week and agreed that Ms. Huth along with her friend should be present for a further deposition prior to the trial.
Mr. Cosby’s lawyers have also questioned whether she had only remembered the alleged abuse a short time before filing the suit because, they said, she had contacted a tabloid about it 10 years earlier.
Mr. Wyatt, the spokesman for Mr. Cosby, said in the statement, “We feel confident that the Playboy records along with Ms. Huth changing her timeline of events from 1974 to 1975 in the 11th hour will vindicate Mr. Cosby.”
Ms. Huth and Mr. Cosby met at the Playboy Mansion. Ms. Huth produced photos of them together, which she claimed were taken there according to court papers. But he denied that she was a minor at the time they met.
“While defendant does not deny that he socialized with plaintiff at the Playboy Mansion, as he did other women and men who frequented the club,” his lawyers said in court papers, “defendant vehemently denies that plaintiff was underage.”
Ms. Huth has said that she changed the timeline of her account in part because she only recently realized, as a result of documents put forward by Mr. Cosby, that the filming of the movie “Let’s Do It Again,” where she says they met, took place later than she had recalled.
The trial is expected that it will last two weeks. Ms. Huth is seeking damages from Mr. Cosby and is expected along with the friend who accompanied them to the Playboy Mansion to testify. Mr. Cosby has invoked the Fifth Amendment privilege against self incrimination and will not testify. Wyatt confirmed that he would not be present at the trial.
Ms. Huth requested a bench trial during pretrial hearings. However, the trial will be before a 12-person jury with at least 9 votes required for conviction.
Mr. Cosby settled the $3.4 million civil case Ms. Constand brought against his in 2006. The other civil cases were settled for undisclosed terms by the insurance carried on Mr. Cosby’s home policy, which provided “personal injury” coverage in a range of circumstances, including lawsuits that accused the policy holder of defamation.
Lili Bernard, an actor/visual artist who claimed that Mr. Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her in Atlantic City, in 1990, when she had been 26 years old, filed the second civil case against him. The suit was filed by Lili Bernard, an actor and visual artist who claimed that Mr. Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her in Atlantic City in 1990. This case is still in its infancy. New Jersey changed its laws regarding the statute of limitations in sexual assault cases in 2019. They extended the time limit for filing suits, and created a special window of two years for people to bring cases, regardless of when the alleged assaults occurred.
Source: NY Times