How does the Bill Cosby lawsuit change things?
Ann Oldenburg, USA TODAY
December 3, 2014
For the first time since recent rape allegations have surfaced about Bill Cosby, the star's woes are now heading to the legal arena.
And for the first time since Nov. 17, Cosby has appeared on Twitter. He has thanked both View co-host Whoopi Goldberg, who has expressed skepticism about some of the accusers' stories, and singer Jill Scott, who also has defended him on Twitter, noting that the allegations haven't been proved.
The tweets comes as pressure is mounting for Cosby, 77, to say more about the allegations.
So far, his only comments about the 20 women who have told similar decades-old stories of sexual assault, came before his Melbourne, Fla., show when he told Florida Today reporters, "I know people are tired of me not saying anything, but a guy doesn't have to answer to innuendos."
Will the new lawsuit force him to address the accusations? Maybe.
Elizabeth Kase, a partner at New York's Abrams Fensterman who specializes in criminal law, views the civil suit as a positive for Cosby.
"Now they're in court. Now there's process. Now there are rules of evidence and a Constitution. There's something he can respond with — and to — that has rules and function of law. It takes it out of this crazy world of the Internet, where it is lawless," she says.
Specifically, in the civil claim, a Southern California woman named Judy Huth says in papers filed Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court that Cosby, 77, sexually assaulted her in 1974 when she was 15. She is calling it "childhood sexual abuse," saying the "traumatic incident, at such a tender age, has caused psychological damage and mental anguish" throughout her life "since the incident."
Huth alleges that she and a female friend, 16, wandered onto a Cosby film set in Lacy Park in San Marino, Calif. Cosby invited them to sit in his director's chair. He invited them to his tennis club and eventually they wound up at the Playboy Mansion.
After being served "multiple alcoholic beverages," the teens followed Cosby to the Playboy Mansion, according to documents posted by Radar Online. When Huth went to the bathroom at one point, she emerged to find Cosby sitting on a bed. He asked her to sit beside him and he then "tried to put his hand down her pants" and then "took her hand in his and performed a sex act on himself without her consent."
The suit calls Cosby's alleged "childhood sexual abuse" actions "malicious, oppressive and fraudulent in nature." Huth is asking for unspecified damages and legal fees.
California attorney Lisa Bloom, who has handled similar lawsuits for accusers in the past, says the state passed a law in 1990 allowing allegations of underage sexual abuse to be made in civil suits years or decades later.
"A child who is molested could suffer from a host of problems that follow her through life, and she may not realize this until much later," Bloom says. In recognition, California allows a person who alleges molestation as a child to file suit up to three years after she has "connected the dots" between the alleged molestation and her emotional trauma.'
In her lawsuit, Huth, now 55, suggests the statute of limitations be waived because she discovered "her psychological injuries and illnesses were caused by the sexual abuse perpetrated by Cosby" within the past three years.
"Forty years (since the alleged molestation) is a pretty long time," Bloom says, though she's prevailed in cases involving 15 or 20 years. But she says this is Huth's only legal option left if she wants to pursue Cosby now.
Meanwhile, Bloom's mother, prominent women's rights attorney Gloria Allred, "challenged" Cosby at a press conference Wednesday, with three weeping Cosby accusers, to waive the statute of limitations for all women so that they can come forward. "Then Bill Cosby and his accusers would have an opportunity to go before a judge and jury and everybody wins."
She added, "The public deserves to know if Mr. Cosby is a saint or a sexual predator."
She offered a second option, should Cosby not want to open himself up to more lawsuits. Allred called for him to put $100 million in a fund "and anyone who claims she was a victim could appear before a panel of retired judges. The judges would then decide."
Allred said, "It is time for justice and accountability."
Next legal step in Huth's lawsuit: Cosby and his lawyers will have to answer the complaint.
"Unless it's thrown out at an early stage, he'll have to submit to depositions and be sworn in and testify under oath," says Jerry Reisman, a partner at Reisman, Peirez, Reisman and Capobianco law firm in Garden City, N.Y.
Cosby, says Kase, "can testify. And usually civil defendants do testify. If they don't give their side of the story, then it's only her word and that's enough for a preponderance of proof."
Reisman adds that a Cosby jury could have a tough time should it get that far. "This will be very hard for a jury because there have been so many claims against him." Huth, he says, is "substantiating prior allegations."
Of course, settlement is an option. Cosby settled a civil suit in 2006 with Andrea Constad, who accused him of sexual assault. She claimed in her filing that 13 more victims were ready to come forward.
And is this at all reminiscent of traumatized molestation accusers in the many civil lawsuits filed against the Catholic Church involving priests?
Not exactly, although Allred drew a comparison during her Wednesday press conference, saying, "He could open the window as was done with the Catholic Church cases in California.
Those lawsuits were usually filed against the church and not individual priests. And many of those ended in settlements. AP has estimated the settlements of sex abuse cases from 1950 to 2007 have totaled more than $2 billion.
Both Reisman and Kase say a class-action suit is very unlikely. Class actions are more for business purposes (breast implants, cellphones) and these cases are individual. Plus there's the statute of limitations.
Louisa Moritz, 68, who played Rose in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and starred in the '70s show Love American Style, is among the women who recalled an incident with Cosby, saying he forced her to perform oral sex on him in her dressing room before an appearance on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show in 1971.
Moritz, who has a law degree, told USA TODAY she was looking into filing a lawsuit, but would really like an apology or admission from Cosby.
"We'd be seeking an apology and an acknowledgement because he's not acknowledging he did anything," says Moritz. "And then (he'd have to) offer some kind of satisfaction or something."
Cosby's lawyer, Martin Singer, who has represented Arnold Schwarzenegger and Charlie Sheen, among many other high-profile Hollywood stars, has not commented on the new lawsuit or Allred's press conference.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2014/12/03/bill-cosby-lawsuit-legal-troubles-sexual-abuse/19822963/
