Bill Cosby vs. Judy Huth

CBS News and the New York Times report that a civil jury has found that Bill Cosby sexually abused a teenager in the Playboy Mansion in 1975. The Los Angeles County awarded Judy Huth $500,000 in damages. In 2014, Ms Huth brought forward allegations that Cosby had assaulted her as a teenager. Cosby has been accused by many different women, but few of the suits have been filed because the women had not come forward at the time they claimed that Cosby had assaulted them. Huth’s suit was able to be heard because the jury agreed that she was a minor when Cosby assaulted her. The time frame for filing a civil claim is extended in the cases regarding people who were molested as minors.

Cosby had previously been sentenced to three to ten years in prison, but was freed last year after three years. The case began with Cosby’s arrest in 2015 on charges that he had drugged and sexually assaulted Andrea Constand 11 years earlier. In 2018, a jury convicted Cosby of three counts of aggravated indecent assault. In 2021, the case was overturned by an appellate panel on due process grounds, when a court ruled that a previous “non-prosecution agreement” with a previous prosecutor meant that Cosby should not have been charged. The accusations of more than 60 women came as a shock to the nation, as did the subsequent overruling and release. 

Cosby has maintained his innocence throughout all the allegations.