A Los Angeles jury found Bill Cosby liable in a civil case on Tuesday for sexually assaulting a then-16-year-old girl at the Playboy Mansion in 1975.
The jury, comprised of nine women and three men, awarded 64-year-old Judy Huth $500,000 in damages, the Associated Press reported. Huth said she was relieved the jury believed her story, despite not winning punitive damages.
“It’s been torture,” Huth said of the seven-year legal fight. “To be ripped apart, you know, thrown under the bus and backed over. This, to me, is such a big victory.”
Huth initially filed the lawsuit in 2014, seeking damages for emotional distress, Sis2Sis reported. In her complaint, she recalled meeting Cosby on a film set in April 1975 with her high school friend Donna Samuelson. After that, Huth said the entertainer invited them to his tennis club, where he allegedly offered them alcoholic drinks and took them to the Playboy Mansion.
The 64-year-old testified that Cosby knew she and her friend were underage, telling the teens “that if any of the Playboy bunnies asked their age, they should say they were 19.”
From there, Huth said Cosby took the young girls to a bedroom in the famed Holmby Hills estate, where the trio was hanging out before he molested her.
Huth’s attorney Nathan Goldberg addressed the jury during his closing arguments on Wednesday, affirming that “my client deserves to have Mr. Cosby held accountable for what he did.”
“Each of you knows in your heart that Mr. Cosby sexually assaulted Miss Huth,” Goldberg said.
While Cosby was not in court as the jury delivered the verdict, his spokesman and attorney believed the ruling turned out differently since additional damages were not awarded.
“What happened today wasn’t a victory, because they didn’t get the punitive damages,” said Cosby’s spokesperson Andrew Wyatt.
The decision comes nearly a year after Pennsylvania’s highest court had overturned Cosby’s rape conviction in the state, releasing him from prison in June 2021. The comedian was founded guilty of sexual assault in 2018 for drugging and raping Andrea Constand in 2004.
Over 60 women accused Cosby of rape, drug-facilitated sexual assault, sexual battery, child sexual abuse, and sexual misconduct. He was sentenced to three to 10 years in prison and was required to register as a sexual predator.
Huth’s case was the first legal complaint to make it to trial due to others being settled out of court through Cosby’s insurer.
