Bill Cosby in Court Again Today
Bill Cosby lost his bid to dismiss the sexual battery civil suit filed against him by Judy Huth, but his attorneys will be able to depose his accuser once again after she recently changed her prior testimony about the timing of the alleged assault.
At a hearing in a Santa Monica courthouse on Tuesday, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Karlan said he will allow Jennifer Bonjean, one of Cosby's attorneys, to further question Huth and her friend, Donna Samuelson, for an hour sometime before jury selection begins next week.
The judge, however, ruled tentatively that he would deny Cosby's motion asking for this case to be dismissed with prejudice. Cosby's attorneys filed an emergency motion on May 13 after Huth's attorneys informed them that Huth recently realized she was with Cosby at the Playboy mansion in 1975, not 1974.
That means Huth would've been 16 or 17 years old instead of 15 — as she initially claimed –when Cosby allegedly molested her at the Playboy mansion.
"We were surprised last week when we learned that the Plaintiff in the case had altered, changed her narrative," Bonjean said to reporters after the hearing. "It changed in dramatic ways from what she has alleged for the last 20 years. … Now she is saying, 'Well, I was 16– one month before my 17th birthday.'
"This is a fundamental change because … it is extraordinarily difficult to defend against an allegation from 50 years ago. Nobody could do it. … It's called trial by ambush and courts frown upon it," said Bonjean.
"And this judge, thankfully, recognizes that there was prejudice against Mr.Cosby and he is allowing us the opportunity to depose the Plaintiff and her friend to engage in the discovery we have been denied."
The judge also ordered Playboy Enterprises to provide a list of employees from the mid-1970s to determine if any one them could testify about how visitor logs were maintained during those years.
Amber Henry, an attorney for Playboy Enterprises, told the judge on Tuesday that they already gave all of the information they were required to provide under Huth's subpoena for records.
Henry also said the company doesn't have any employees who could testify how visitors logs were kept back in the 1970s and that those logs, if they still exist, could be in the hands of Hugh Hefner's estate.
"I think the simplest solution is to make calls and find out," Judge Karlan said to Henry before ordering the company to produce a list of employees who worked at the mansion in the mid-1970s. "I get that many of the people who work there weren't even born at the time of the incident but that that doesn't mean they can't have the diligence to search for people who might have that knowledge."
In her complaint filed in December 2014, Huth claimed she was 15-years-old and Samuelson was 16 when they first met Cosby as he was filming a movie at Lacy Park in Los Angeles. The women said Cosby asked them how old they were during that initial meeting.
Huth said Cosby invited her and Samuelson a few days later to the Playboy mansion and told them to say they were 19 years old if questioned. Huth claims Cosby sexually molested her at the mansion by "putting his hand down her pants, and then taking her hand in his hand and performing a sex act on himself without consent."
John West, one of Huth's attorneys, argued his client's claims still fall within the the statute of limitations under the 2019 California law that allows victims to "look back" at decades-old sexual child sexual and file civil complaints.
"The problem with Ms.Bonjean's argument is that statute of limitations are extended all the time," West said. "Ms.Huth's claim is timely and Ms.Bonjean's is arguing based on an old version of the law."
Nathan Goldberg, Huth's other attorney, added his client recently recalled Cosby had a beard at the time of the assault.
"This is very important because he had a beard two times– on the film 'Lets Do It Again' and 'Uptown Saturday Night,'" Goldberg said. "In the pictures of them (Huth and Cosby) together, he had a beard."
"Lets Do it Again" was released on October 1975, while "Uptown Saturday Night" — where Cosby co-starred with Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier– was released in 1974.
Bonjean shot back and said Huth and Samuelson's stories should not be trusted since they have consulted one another about their new narratives. She questioned Huth's motivation to change her narrative on the eve of trial and argued why Huth didn't remember this detail when she sold her story to a media outlet in 2005.
"We deny, obviously that Mr.Cosby did anything at the Playboy Mansion that would constitute a sexual battery," Bonjean said after Tuesday's hearing. "That hasn't changed. What is still a question mark is whether they could even prove that the meeting at Lacy Park happened or transpired the way they say it happened.
"Those (Playboy) records are evidence, not only to show that Bill Cosby did not have guests during this relevant time period … but they tell a story of other people who were there– Peter Lawford, Buck Owens. That's a way to determine, to test the veracity. I cannot do that without the records."
Opening statements for the week-long trial is scheduled to begin on June 1.
Andrew Wyatt, Cosby's crisis manager representative, said the comedian would not be attending the trial because he is legally blind and traveling would be too difficult.
"Mr.Cosby remains resilient … he's healthy and is ready to get this past him so he could move on with his family," Wyatt said.
Source: https://nypost.com/2022/05/17/bill-cosby-losses-bid-to-dismiss-sexual-battery-case/
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