UPDATE: A California jury has ordered Bill Cosby has to pay a total $59.25 million to a woman he drugged and raped in 1972.
The massive amount was reached following an afternoon session Monday by the jury in the civil case on establishing punitive damages for plaintiff Donna Motsinger. After a couple of hours of deliberation, the jurors decided on $40 million in punitive damages for the former Bay Area waitress.
That’s in addition to the $19.25 million Motsinger was awarded earlier today.
“This verdict is not just about me – it’s about finally being heard and holding Mr. Cosby accountable,” Motsinger said on Monday evening after the final figure was determined. “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.”
With an appeal by Cosby already announced, it is doubtful Motsinger, who sued the much accused and two-time convicted ex-‘America’s Dad” in 2023, will see much of the award anytime soon. Plus, Bill Cosby is said to be nearly broke, so he might not have any cash on hand even if an appeal fails.
PREVIOUSLY, 12:56 PM: With a verdict of $19.25 million in damages, a Santa Monica jury has found Bill Cosby liable for drugging and raping Donna Motsinger 54 years ago.
Whether the financially strapped comedian will be able to pay any of the judgment is doubtful, but his latest lawyer Jennifer Bonjean says an appeal already is being planned. Just like in previous sexual assault trials, both criminal and civil, Cosby, now 88, did not testify in his own defense.
Found liable by the jury for claims of the sexual assault of an intoxicated woman and sexual battery after just three days of deliberation, Cosby has been ordered to pay Motsinger $17.5 million for her past mental trauma. He had to pay another $1.75 million for mental suffering the former Bay Area waitress, now 84 — who was allowed to sue Cosby under changes in recent years in California’s statute of limitations for sex crimes — may experience in the future.
In a deposition video played at the two-week trial, Cosby is asked if he had sex with Motsinger. He replied, “I cannot remember if I did or not.”
Still undetermined are further punitive damages based on, as the jury noted, “malice, oppression, or fraud” by Cosby all those years ago. That part of the case is set to start in the next hour at the Santa Monica Courthouse.
As he always has in all his trials and accusations, Cosby said he never had nonconsensual sex. Also, like previous cases, Cosby, through his lawyers, insists he is being targeted and tainted because of his cultural status.
The much-accused Cosby, who reportedly had been selling off multimillion-dollar properties in recent years to meet his bills, was sued by Motsinger in 2023.
Motsinger’s 11-page complaint detailed meeting Cosby at her job, being invited to his local comedy show at the Circle Star Theatre in San Carlos, CA, feeling sick backstage and then “Mr. Cosby gave her what she believed was an aspirin.” In a horrific scene that has emerged again and again from the plethora of women who have alleged Cosby raped or attacked them over the decades, the filing in L.A. Superior Court stated: “The last thing Ms. Motsinger recalls were flashes of light. She woke up in her house with all her clothes off, except her underwear on – no top, no bra, and no pants.”
The drugging and rape occurred the same night Cosby recorded what would become his best-selling album Inside the Mind of Bill Cosby.
The once-revered Cosby has been hit in with dozens and dozens of rape, sexual battery or misconduct allegations since a stand-up routine by Hannibal Buress went viral in 2014. In 2018, Cosby was convicted of the 2004 rape of former Temple University athletics administrator Andrea Constand. That conviction came several months after a mistrial was declared in the first trial of the case in 2017.
Cosby was sentenced in the Constand case in September 2018 to three to 10 years in prison, but the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned his conviction on procedural grounds in June 2021. The comic was released from prison soon afterward. Since then, with the rare public appearance, Cosby has faced more claims and more court cases, including from Constand herself.
Constand testified in the Motsinger trial, along with several other women who have claimed assaults by Cosby.
In fact, in the very courthouse where he was found guilty Monday in the Motsinger case, Cosby was found guilty in June 2022 of sexually assaulting Judy Huth at the Playboy Mansion in 1975 when the plaintiff was 16 years old.
In that case, in which the man once called “America’s Dad” was sued for sexual battery and more by Huth back in 2014, the 12-person jury awarded the plaintiff $500,000 in damages.
