By ANDREW DALTON
Associated Press
SANTA MONICA – Attorneys for entertainment icon Bill Cosby said they plan to appeal a jury’s verdict this week awarding nearly $60 million to a former waitress who said Cosby drugged and raped her after one of his comedy shows more than 50 years ago.
Cosby’s attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, said in an email that she and Cosby’s other lawyers are disappointed with jury’s decision and fully intend to challenge the verdict in appeal’s court.
On March 23, a civil jury found that Cosby, 88, was liable for drugging and sexually assaulting former restaurant server Donna Motsinger in 1972 after his comedy show near San Franscisco. They first awarded her $19.25 million in current and future damages, including “mental suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, inconvenience, grief, anxiety, humiliation, and emotional distress.”
Then in a follow-up phase of the trial, they awarded an additional $40 million in punitive damages. Deliberations after the two-week trial lasted about two days.
The decision came nearly five years after Cosby was freed from prison in Pennsylvania when the state Supreme Court threw out a criminal conviction based on similar allegations. He has settled some similar lawsuits and has been ordered to pay in others, but this week’s award is likely the most he has had to pay in a case.
“This verdict is not just about me — it’s about finally being heard and holding Mr. Cosby accountable,” Motsinger said in a statement. “I have carried the weight of what happened to me for more than 50 years. It never goes away. Today, a jury saw the truth and held him accountable. That means everything. I hope this gives strength to other survivors who are still waiting for their moment to be heard.”
Motsinger had been a server at a restaurant in Sausalito near San Francisco who said in her lawsuit, filed in 2023, that Cosby had invited her to his stand-up comedy show at a theater in nearby San Carlos. Both were in their 30s at the time. She said Cosby gave her wine and two pills that she believed were aspirin, and that she was going in and out of consciousness as two men put her in a limousine.
“She woke up in her house with all her clothes off, except her underwear on — no top, no bra, and no pants,” the lawsuit said. “She knew she had been drugged and raped by Bill Cosby.”
In court filings, Cosby’s lawyers argued that the allegations rested almost entirely on speculation and assumption, saying Motsinger “freely admits that she has no idea what happened.”
Motsinger’s lawsuit moved with surprising quickness through the California courts, taking just 2 1/2 years from filing until verdict while other lawsuits against him stalled.
“We are grateful to the jury for their careful attention to the evidence and to Ms. Motsinger for the extraordinary courage it took to come forward,” said Jesse Creed, one of her attorneys from the Panish Shea Ravipudi law firm that represented her.
Cosby did not testify at the trial, whose witnesses included Andrea Constand, the Temple University sports administrator he was convicted of sexually assaulting in a Pennsylvania criminal court in 2018. The state’s Supreme Court threw out the verdict and Cosby was freed from prison after serving nearly three years of a three- to 10-year sentence.
Motsinger first made her allegations anonymously in a 2005 lawsuit filed by Constand.
The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly and consent to be named, as Constand and Motsinger have.
In 2022, a jury in Santa Monica awarded $500,000 to a woman who said Cosby sexually assaulted at the Playboy Mansion when she was a teenager in 1975.
Motsinger’s lawsuit echoed allegations of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment made by at least 60 women against Cosby, all of which he has denied.
The former stand-up comedy and television superstar once widely known as “America’s Dad” became the first celebrity tried and convicted in the #MeToo era before his conviction was permanently thrown out when appeals court found he gave incriminating testimony in a deposition only after believing he had immunity from prosecution.
