Bill Cosby To Face More Abuse Accusations In Los Angeles Civil Trial

Jury selection has begun for a civil lawsuit filed against Bill Cosby in Los Angeles for which he is accused of sexually assaulting Judy Huth in the Playboy mansion in 1975. Opening comments for the trial are set to begin on June 1.

Cosby has been out of prison for about a year after his conviction for allegedly drugging and assaulting Andrea Constand in 2004 was overturned by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on a legal technicality.

Huth, who first filed the lawsuit in 2014, claims that Cosby assaulted her in 1975 when she was only 16 years old. She initially said that the assault took place a year earlier when she was 15, but later revised that statement.

Huth’s full account is that Cosby reportedly approached her and a friend in the park, and later invited both of them to a party at the Playboy mansion. Once at the mansion, Huth accused Cosby of, “putting his hand down her pants, and then taking her hand in his hand and performing a sex act on himself without consent.”

Cosby’s attorneys attempted to cry foul when Huth changed her story, calling the shift a “bait-and-switch,” as well as a “trial by ambush,” for the defense. Huth’s attorney, Gloria Allred, pushed back by saying “It is a trial by evidence,” and later added, “What we believe they are upset about is that they were intending to ambush Ms. Huth on the witness stand by proving that the event at the mansion could not have occurred when she was 15 years old and we upset their plans.”

The actor will not be present for any of the upcoming civil trial because “he is 100 percent blind from glaucoma and the COVID numbers are going up,” according to his publicist Andrew Wyatt. “We do believe he will be vindicated and he will be able to move on with his family and continue to provide humanity and humor to the world.”

A criminal case for this assault is not possible because it falls far past the statute of limitations, but California law allows people who were victims of sexual abuse while underage to file civil lawsuits against their alleged abusers no matter the time that passed.