COSBY TO BE QUESTIONED
Comedian faces deposition
Comedian Bill Cosby has been ordered to answer questions under oath from feminist power lawyer Gloria Allred regarding sexual assault allegations from a woman who claims he abused her in the Playboy Mansion when she was a teen.
A Los Angeles Superior Court judge handed down the order Tuesday requiring Cosby, 78, to be deposed in October in the case brought by Judith Huth, a California woman who said the comedian molested her in 1974 in a bedroom at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles when she was 15.
“We’re very happy about the result,” Allred told The Washington Post. “Our client wants to have her day in court.”
Cosby’s lawyer, Martin Singer, could not be reached for comment.
Huth, 55, filed the lawsuit against Cosby last year, claiming he molested her “by attempting to put his hand down her pants, and then taking her hand in his hand and performing a sex act on himself without her consent.”
The statute of limitations has passed for a criminal case against Cosby.
Cosby has been trying to keep Huth’s civil case from moving forward. Cosby countersued Huth, claiming she tried to sell her story a decade ago to the tabloids, which, his lawyers argued, meant the statute of limitations barred her civil suit.
This summer, his lawyers used a law on childhood sexual abuse cases to argue he should not have been publicly named in the suit. The California Supreme Court turned down the challenge last month, allowing the case to move to deposition — the second one for Cosby regarding sexual assault allegations.
He was deposed in another case in 2005.
The issue then became which side would be deposed first. The judge said that Cosby’s deposition will take place Oct. 9 and Huth’s on Oct. 15.
“It’s important to us because we’ve been pushing to move forward and now we can,” Allred said. “We want to find out from Mr. Cosby what his position is.” Allred declined to preview questions, adding: “We want Mr. Cosby to be surprised.”
Cosby’s lawyer, Singer, said in a previous statement that the allegations against Cosby had “escalated far past the point of absurdity.”
“These brand new claims about alleged decades-old events are becoming increasingly ridiculous,” he said in the statement.
Huth became the first woman to take legal action against Cosby since former Temple University employee Andrea Constand, a Toronto woman who filed suit in 2005 claiming Cosby sexually assaulted her in 2004.
In a deposition, he admitted he used his fame and drugs to help woo women. He said he once kept prescriptions of the 1970s party drug, better known as Quaaludes, on hand so he could give the drug to women the same way “a person would say ‘have a drink.’”
Cosby has been accused of sexual assault by dozens of women; 35 of them appeared on the cover of New York magazine last month. He has denied the sexual assault allegations and has not been charged with a crime.