Jury Orders Bill Cosby to Pay $19.25 Million After Finding Him Liable for 1972 Sexual Assault

A California civil jury found Bill Cosby liable Monday for drugging and sexually assaulting Donna Motsinger, a former restaurant server, in 1972, and ordered the 88-year-old entertainer to pay $19.25 million in damages — one of the largest civil judgments in a sexual assault case against a celebrity in American history. The jury, deliberating in a San Jose federal courtroom, awarded Motsinger $17.5 million for past pain and suffering and $1.75 million for future suffering, with an additional finding of punitive damages whose amount will be determined in a separate proceeding. Cosby, who did not testify at trial, did not appear in court to hear the verdict read aloud.

Motsinger, now in her 70s, testified that Cosby assaulted her in 1972 after inviting her backstage following a comedy show in Sausalito, California, where she was working as a server at a restaurant. She said Cosby offered her a drink that left her disoriented and unable to resist, and that he sexually assaulted her in a dressing room. Her account followed a pattern that dozens of other women have described over the years in their own accounts of alleged assaults by Cosby — a pattern of targeting women in professional or public settings, incapacitating them with what accusers have described as drugged beverages, and assaulting them while they were unable to consent or resist. Cosby has consistently denied all allegations of non-consensual sexual contact.

Cosby's defense attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, who successfully overturned his 2018 criminal conviction in Pennsylvania on procedural grounds in 2021, told reporters after Monday's verdict that the result was unjust and that she would appeal. Bonjean argued during trial that the allegations were too old to be credible, that Motsinger's testimony contained inconsistencies, and that the case was brought decades after the alleged events occurred in circumstances that made a fair defense impossible. The appeal is likely to focus on evidentiary rulings that allowed prior-bad-acts testimony and on whether the statute of limitations was properly extended under California's Adult Survivors Act, which created a temporary window in 2022 and 2023 allowing adults to sue over childhood or adult sexual assault claims regardless of how old the underlying events were.

Monday's verdict is the latest in a series of civil judgments against Cosby stemming from the wave of sexual assault allegations that engulfed his career beginning in 2014, when comedian Hannibal Buress's standup set referencing Cosby's history of allegations went viral and prompted dozens of women to come forward publicly. Prior to his criminal conviction in 2018 — which was overturned three years later after a Pennsylvania Supreme Court found that prosecutors had violated an earlier non-prosecution agreement — Cosby had settled numerous civil claims privately, with the terms kept confidential under non-disclosure agreements. Monday's judgment is one of the few to proceed to a public verdict with a specific dollar figure.

The case has resonated beyond the courtroom as a marker of how significantly American culture and legal norms around sexual assault accountability have shifted since the #MeToo era. Attorneys for Motsinger said after the verdict that their client had not come forward for decades in part because she did not believe she would be believed, and that the cultural moment created by other women speaking out had given her the courage to pursue legal action. "This verdict is a message," her lead attorney said in a statement, "that no matter how long it takes, accountability is possible." For Cosby, who has been legally blind since 2017 and in declining health, the $19.25 million judgment represents a financial blow that his attorneys have signaled he will contest through every available appellate avenue.