Bill Cosby Ordered to Pay $60 Million For 1972 Sexual Assault

Hey there, folks.

It is Tuesday, March twenty fourth, and a California jury has found Bill Cosby liable for a sexual assault that happened before Amy Robock and I were even born. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ fifty plus years ago we're talking about. And a jury just said, mister Cosby, you need to pay a huge amount to this woman for something that happened in nineteen seventy two.

Do I have that right?

Yes, nineteen seventy two.

It happened on one occasion, and a jury took more than two days to deliberate, but they have awarded this woman fifty nine point two five million dollars for her.

Pain and suffering and for punitive damages. In this case. It was the largest verdict so far.

So far, we say, And to be quite honest with you, it's hard to keep up. Every time I see a Harvey Weinstein update about a trial day, I'm like, Wow, he's still dealing with legal stuff. I'd be honest with you, I didn't realize Bill Cosby is still dealing with lawsuits that are flying all over Bliss.

He certainly is, And this was a doozy of a lawsuit. And look, she testified, took the stand, described what happened to her. She said on that day in nineteen seventy two, three other women testified of having similar encounters with Bill Cosby.

He did not take the.

Stand, and it's interesting to hear what he said in deposition. It wasn't He's denied, by the way, ever assaulting a woman. He says that any sex he had in even any coeludes he gave women, which he's admitted to doing, have all been consensual that they agreed to take them. So he admitted to having extramarital affairs and being a womanizer and even drugging women, but he said it was all consensual.

And again Bill Cosby at this point has been out of prison for several years. He had a ten year prison Three to ten years is what it was supposed to be. He served three because a was Supreme Court throughout the criminal conviction. So everything that's going on with Bill Cosby, all the accusations and things, one conviction and that one was thrown out. So from a criminal standpoint, he's dealt with that part of these cases correct.

And it was thrown out because a previous prosecutor had agreed to not prosecute, and so when they went ahead with a different prosecutor and pursued charges and he was found guilty. Ultimately, the Supreme Court said he should never have been charged in the first place, based on an agreement that had been in place in that state.

So he's out of prison, been out of prison for several years. And a reminder, this is an eighty eight year old blind man at this point, and he is still facing a number of lawsuits. This one now has reached his conclusion and sixty million dollars. A lot of people are going to be paying attention to this. But this one had to do with a case in nineteen

Yes, she said she thought it was aspirin. She said she had a headache. She said, he gave her wine. He picked her up in a limousine. She was a waitress at a restaurant there in Salcelito, so she caught his eye.

He invited her to a show.

She was excited, but she said when he gave her that pill that she thought was an aspirin, she said, she became incapacitated, and she testified about how she ultimately was in and out of consciousness. She remembers being backstage and she ended up waking up in her own home naked and realized that she had been sexually assaulted.

And I guess folk Brogs should be addressed.

Here we are is this is twenty twenty six, and we're talking about a sexual assault in nineteen seventy two. This is happening now. But this this woman has been actually trying to hold him accountable for twenty years almost. This is not the first time this has come up.

Just now, correct and so yes, her reaction after the verdict, she mentions that she says it's been fifty four years to get justice. She says, I know it's not complete for the rest of the women, but I hope it helps them a little bit. And I thought this was interesting. She said, I know this wasn't a criminal trial. I know that I didn't get a guilty verdict, but she said it was important that she was believed and that Bill Cosby in some way was held accountable for what he did to her.

And that makes sense.

And yeah, this girl's mentioning there, this has gone through the process. She didn't just bring this up here all these years later. She had actually been on the record as early as two thousand and five with accusations she had made and tried to go through the criminal process. And again they changed even the law out there in California to allow for victims of sexual assault to have more time when it comes to a statute of limitations in the criminal or even civil cases we've seen in

I think I find it incredible.

And some on the other side would even say, this doesn't make sense. How can you hold him accountable with something that happened that long ago? Who remembers when and what. That's part of his argument, and even his attorneys argue, you hold him liable for something that the woman even says herself. She doesn't exactly know what happened.

Right, because she was drugged. She says she doesn't know.

She just you know, a woman knows when she's had sex, or at least when someone has penetrated her. That's pretty obvious and coming in and out of consciousness, I think when you have When you take her account and the jury heard from three other women who had almost identical accounts, that became a strong enough case from a civil lawsuit standpoint, where the threshold is lower than it is in a criminal court. And it did take them a couple of days to come up with the verdict, but certainly it

Said that they believe that Bill Cosby is still.

Worth one hundred and twenty eight million dollars, so he can afford this nearly sixty million dollar lawsuit against him.

And it was broken down.

Some of this was different types of damages, but the chunk of it forty million or so, was to punish him literally, punitive damages for what had taken place. The rest kind of reimbursement for damages for mental.

And all that stuff.

But yeah, they actually the huge chunk of this was a message they were sending about punishing Bill Cosby. Bill Cosby, still, it's been a while, and it's been years. This is a reminder, but Robes, he's come down from that pedestal. But man, still, you've reminding of this story and just how big his star was and how influential of an entertainer he was in this country.

Oh, the Cosby Show was everything, and that Look, we see these stories oftentimes where you've got these men in powerful positions, who are beloved, who are put up on a pedestal, who.

Have been accused of abusing that power.

But yes, to your point, the jury only well I say only, but when you look at almost sixty million dollars, only nineteen point twenty five million of that was for her pain and suffering. It was the forty million dollars that whopper of a judgment that.

Was for punitive. You're right, that was to say, hey.

We believe this woman, and you should be punished, even though you're not behind bars, you should be punished for what we now believe you did. Now, this is interesting because his attorney you mentioned Hayes blind. That is almost exactly what his attorney said. This isn't about providing deterrence. A blind eighty eight year old man can't leave his house. That was in part her response to the judgment against him.

I mean punitive is punitive.

It doesn't matter what age he is, and I mean right, nobody's saying he's a threat to the community necessarily. But the still, this is what justice. This is what justice can look like at this point. So if that will ever happen, who knows, we know what his imprint has been. We know this guy has made a lot of money over a lot of years, a lot of decades in his career, but sixty million hadn't work for a decade.

Yeah, they're saying, I mean he had to sell. He's already had to. I believe two of his homes have been foreclosed upon.

He did sell a Manhattan apartment for twenty eight million dollars, and he still does own more than one home in Pennsylvania, New York. So he does have tangible property. I'm not sure how they go about trying to acquire that or force him to pay.

We've certainly seen civil judgments.

OJ Simpson comes to mind, most notably where the Goldmans tried for decades to get money from him, and are still trying to get money from his estate at this point.

So a lot of.

These judgments sound like big deals, and they are big deals, but a lot of times they end up in practicality being symbolic rather than actually financially lucrative. And remember, Bill Cosby already had one other civil ruling against him back in twenty twenty two. I forgot about this, where a jury found him liable for sexually assaulting a then sixteen year old all the way back in nineteen seventy five.

And this is a guy we have from mean, he's eighty eight. Who knows what kind of health he is in now, but he certainly don't know whims the last time we saw him in Well, he doesn't make public appearances obviously, but yeah, he's kept an incredibly low profile. He is living out his days and he is spending those glory years, right he should have been celebrated to the end of his days, still making appearances on television shows.

Yeah, he was America's dad.

I mean we both were at that age where that was such a juggernaut of a show, watched every single Thursday night.

It was musty TV, and everyone loved him.

It was such a crushing blow to hear all of these women's accounts, and yes there are now I think it's one of those things where we talk about Sean Diddycombs as well.

You start to lose count.

But by most accounts, there are more than a dozen other lawsuits against Bill Cosey that have been filed in multi states, including New York and Nevadas. So clearly a lot of those women and their attorneys were looking to

Well, we appreciate you listening to us.

As always, everyone, I'm Amy Roebock alongside TJ.

Holmes. We have Morning run coming up soon. Look for it.