Comedian Bill Cosby is expected to invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in a civil lawsuit in California that accuses him of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl at the Playboy Mansion in 1974.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, lawyer Michael Freedman wrote on Wednesday in a status report that Cosby, 84, will continue to remain mum about the alleged assaults. The latest lawsuit pertains to Judy Huth, who claimed the then-37-year-old comedian approached her and her 16-year-old friend while they watched him work on a film set.
Huth said that days after their initial meeting, Cosby plied her with alcohol and took her to the Playboy Mansion. It was there where Cosby allegedly took her to the bathroom, tried to kiss her, and put his hand down her pants. Huth also claimed Cosby later took her hand and made her perform a sex act on him, according to the New York Daily News.
Huth filed the lawsuit against Cosby in Los Angeles in 2014. Cosby’s publicist and crisis manager Andrew Wyatt told the Daily News that Cosby denies the allegations — and that the comedian’s legal team has proof showing Huth was not underage on the date she claimed the assault occurred.
Wyatt also claimed Cosby was not at the location on the dates Huth claimed the assault transpired.
“Having already been forced to face a malicious criminal prosecution that resulted in an unlawful three-year incarceration, Defendant is not confident that such a risk does not still exist in this jurisdiction and others,” Cosby’s attorney wrote in this week’s filing, explaining why the comedian was pleading the Fifth.
The news outlet noted that Cosby invoked the Fifth Amendment during his first deposition in Huth’s lawsuit.
In June, Cosby was released from a Pennsylvania jail after serving more than two years of a three- to 10-year sentence. While Cosby was convicted in 2018 of sexually assaulting Andrea Constand at his Cheltenham home in 2004, the state Supreme Court tossed the conviction due to a 2005 verbal agreement that gave him lifetime immunity from prosecution if he testified in Constand’s civil trial.
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[Featured image: Bill Cosby/AP Photo/Matt Slocum, File]
