UPDATE, 3:39 PM: Bill Cosby sexually assaulted a minor back in the mid-’70s, a jury decided today.
After just over three full days of deliberations and one substitution, the Santa Monica panel this afternoon revealed its decision against the much accused Cosby Show creator. Handed to LA Superior Court Judge Craig Karlan with plaintiff Judy Huth, her legal team, and Cosby’s defense team in attendance at the packed courtroom, the 12-person jury also awarded Huth $500,000 in damages.
However, there were no punitive damages awarded from the eight women and four men who made up the jury.
Cosby was not in the courtroom when the message was read out.
Claiming his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, Cosby did not testify in the two-week trial, unlike Huth. A 2015 video deposition by the actor was played to the court and jurors during the trial. With his 2018 sex crimes conviction for the 2004 rape of Andrea Constand vacated by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in June 2021, the 84-year old Cosby is almost certain to appeal today’s verdict, sources tell me.
The man once respectfully called “America’s Dad” was sued for sexual battery and more by Judy Huth back in 2014. The plaintiff alleged that the assault by Cosby occurred at the Playboy Mansion in the mid-’70s when she was a teenager. At first Huth claimed the attack occurred in 1974, when she was 15, but later the plaintiff shifted the date to 1975, when she would have been 16.
PREVIOUSLY, 2:42 PM: Bill Cosby could know very soon if a California jury has decided that he sexually assaulted a minor.
For a second time in less than a week, jurors in Santa Monica have informed Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Craig Karlan that they have reached a verdict in Judy Huth’s civil case against the man once known as “America’s Dad.” If everything goes according to plan, the decision will be read out in court within the next hour.
Unlike in his criminal trials and now-vacated 2018 conviction for the 2004 rape of Andrea Constand, the 84-year-old Cosby does not face jail time in the Huth case. However, the disgraced Cosby Show creator could end up paying millions in damages if today’s verdict goes against him.
Huth, who first sued Cosby in 2014 for sexual battery and two other claims, alleges that the previously incarcerated comedian assaulted her at the Playboy Mansion in the mid-1970s when she was 16. In language similar to what Cosby and his team have been using for years, a representative for the defendant said this month when the much-delayed trial finally began that “Mr. Cosby will fully be exonerated once the jurors hear the evidence as well as examine the many inconsistent accounts given by Ms. Huth.”
“You have to decide what’s right,” Huth’s lawyer Nathan Goldberg declared in a rebuttal of sorts to the jurors last week during closing arguments. “But please bear in mind that you have to hold Mr. Cosby wholly and completely accountable for the harm he did.”
Goldberg’s Allred, Maroko & Goldberg partner Gloria Allred has been in the court every day of the trial and during jury deliberations.
At first identifying the date of the alleged incident as having occurred in 1974 and more recently shifting the time to 1975, an emotional Huth provided vivid details of the alleged sexual assault by Cosby during her testimony. While an absent Cosby said he never met Huth, and the actor’s legal team derided her for changing the year of the incident, Huth’s lawyers provided photographs of Cosby and Huth together taken by the latter’s friend Donna Samuelson. Facing compelling testimony from both Huth and Samuelson, Cosby’s lawyers then postulated that the encounter between Huth and their client had happened years later when Huth was no longer a minor.
Cosby’s lawyers also attempted to snare Huth in claims that she had been peddling the pics to tabloids and others in the past for a big payout.
Cosby himself did not…
Read More: Bill Cosby Verdict Reached In Judy Huth Sexual Assault Trial – Deadline