Attorneys for a woman who won a nearly $60 million verdict this spring in her lawsuit alleging that the actor/comedian sexually abused her more than 50 years ago while she was a server at a Sausalito restaurant are asking a judge to consider holding the comedian in contempt for allegedly ignoring post-verdict orders.
Donna Motsinger contended in her Santa Monica Superior Court sexual battery lawsuit that Cosby drugged and raped her. On March 23, a jury awarded her $19.25 million in compensatory damages and $40 million in punitive damages for a total of $59.25 million.
On Wednesday, Motsinger’s attorneys filed court papers with Judge Bradley S. Phillips asking that he consider holding Cosby in contempt for not responding to written questions about his assets. When Motsinger’s attorneys sought and obtained a court order on Oct. 9, Cosby ignored it as well as a $1,560 fine, according to the plaintiff’s attorneys’ court papers.
“Nothing was served and nothing was paid,” Motsinger’s attorneys state in their court papers. “Cosby did not seek an extension or provide an explanation. He simply disobeyed.”
A hearing on Motsinger’s contempt motion is scheduled Jan. 19, 2027.
In May, the judge denied Cosby’s attorneys’ motion for a new trial. In their court papers, the 89-year-old Cosby’s lawyers said they were wrongly barred from introducing police notes showing prior inconsistent statements by Motsinger and that by barring the plaintiff’s prior drug use the court “sanitized plaintiff” and casted her in a false light before the jury.
“Plaintiff’s own use of drugs is highly probative of whether she would have unknowingly consumed two round white pills, falsely believing them to be aspirin,” according to the Cosby’s lawyers’ pleadings.
According to Motsinger’s lawsuit, Cosby came into the Trident restaurant every day during a stretch of 1972. Motsinger worked there as a server and tended to Cosby at his table, the suit stated. One day when she was headed to her Mill Valley home he followed her, pulled up next to the plaintiff and asked her if she would like to attend a show he was performing in San Carlos, according to the complaint.
Motsinger agreed and Cosby said he would pick her up later, the suit stated. A limousine driver subsequently took Motsinger to the theater and on the way there Cosby gave her a glass of wine, the suit stated.
“She began to feel sick and Mr. Cosby gave her what she believed was an aspirin,” the suit stated, while adding that the next thing Motsinger knew she was going in and out of consciousness. The last thing Motsinger remembers were flashes of light and waking up at home wearing only her underwear, the suit filed in September 2023 stated.
“She knew she had been drugged and raped by Bill Cosby,” the suit stated.
Cosby’s attorneys said he did not remember any sexual contact with Motsinger, but if any occurred, it was consensual. The same lawyers also denied giving Motsinger drugs without her permission.
In June 2022, another Santa Monica civil jury found Bill Cosby liable for sexually abusing Judy Huth at the Playboy Mansion in 1975, when she was 16 years old. The panel awarded Huth $500,000.
Cosby was convicted in 2018 of sexually assaulting Andrea Constand in 2004. He served three years in prison, but his conviction was overturned in 2021 and he was released from custody.