Bill Cosby has been ordered to give a sworn deposition in a lawsuit involving a woman who accused him of sexually assaulting her at the Playboy Mansion in 1974 when she was just 15-years-old.
Fox News reports the order, by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Craig Karlan, was made public on Wednesday. The order requires the comedian to submit to questioning by Judy Huth’s lawyer on October 9. Huth’s deposition will be taken on October 15.
Huth’s lawyer, Gloria Allred will most likely depose Cosby in Massachusetts where he currently resides, she told Reuters.
“Our client wants to have her day in court,” Allred told The Washington Post in a phone interview.
We’re very happy about the result. Our client wants to have her day in court.
Huth, 55, filed the lawsuit last year, claiming that Cosby molested her “by attempting to put his hand down her pants, and then taking her hand in his hand and performing a sex act on himself without her consent.”
While the statute of limitations has passed for a criminal case against the 78-year-old actor, Huth is pursuing a civil case.
In an effort to stall Huth’s civil case, Cosby countersued the woman, claiming she attempted to sell her story to the tabloids ten years ago. Cosby’s attorneys argue this means the statute of limitations barred her civil suit.
His attorneys cited a law from childhood sexual abuse cases to argue that Huth should not have publicly named Cosby in her lawsuit. The challenge was turned down last month by the California Supreme Court, which allows the case to move forward to deposition.
Over a dozen women – 35 of whom appeared on the cover of New York Magazine last month — have accused Cosby of sexual assault. Huth is the first women to take legal action against the comedian since 2005 when former Temple University employee Andrea Constand filed a suit claiming Cosby sexually assaulted her in 2004.
Cosby previously admitted in court to giving drugs to women that he wanted to have sex relations with. He said in a deposition that he kept Quaaludes on hand so he could offer them to women he met the same way a “person would say ‘have a drink.’”
