Janice Dickinson settles defamation case against Bill Cosby

New York Daily News

Model Janice Dickinson has declared an “epic” victory in her defamation case against Bill Cosby.

The supermodel and her lawyer, Lisa Bloom, said Thursday they’ve settled their four-year legal battle with Cosby’s insurance provider against the comedian’s wishes.

Dickinson sued Cosby in May 2015, saying he intentionally defamed her when his lawyer issued statements that branded her a liar after she stepped forward with claims Cosby drugged and raped her in a Lake Tahoe hotel room in 1982.

“A settlement is a victory and certainly a measure of justice and helps me sleeps better, but in reality, nothing can ever erase the experience and memories of the assault,” Dickinson said Thursday.

“Jail is where he belongs,” she said of Cosby. “But there aren’t enough years left for him to pay for what he has done to so very many, many women.”

Dickinson said she was drugged and raped “by a monster,” and her life “from then went into a downward spiral.”

“I became different. I lost that innocence,” she said.

Bloom said the financial terms of the deal were confidential, but the pact allows Dickinson to speak freely about her experience with Cosby.

“I can’t tell you the number, but I can say that it is an epic amount which is a powerful statement from Bill Cosby’s own insurance company over his objections,” Bloom said. “Janice has won her case.”

Speaking to the New York Daily News, Bloom said the deal with insurance company AIG was actually reached last month before she presented an oral argument in California’s 2nd Appellate District on Cosby’s second appeal in the case.

She alerted the appeals court to the tentative agreement, but the judges moved ahead with the arguments on June 27 on Cosby’s attempt to overturn a lower court ruling and get the case dismissed, she said.

“I have never seen an appellate panel more friendly to one side and more hostile to another side as in this case,” she told The News, adding the court later issued a tentative ruling in Dickinson’s favor.

While a final ruling from the appeals court is still pending, Bloom’s firm filed case dismissal paperwork that was awaiting a stamp from the Los Angeles County Superior Court on Thursday.

Cosby tried to get the case spiked by arguing the statements against Dickinson were issued by his lawyer, not him, and either way they amounted to free speech.

The lower court disagreed, saying enough evidence existed to suggest Cosby approved the statements.

Cosby, 82, is now in a Pennsylvania prison after he was convicted last year of drugging and sexually assaulting former Temple University staffer Andrea Constand at his suburban Philadelphia mansion in 2004.

He was sentenced to three to 10 years behind bars for the three felony counts.

Cosby filed a separate appeal of the criminal conviction last month, arguing the trial judge erred repeatedly, including when he allowed Dickinson and four other women to testify before