NEW YORK – Nine women accused disgraced comedian Bill Cosby of sexual assault in a Nevada lawsuit on Wednesday, less than two months after the American state changed its statute of limitations for civil cases involving that crime.
The women said in the lawsuit that the assaults took place in Nevada between 1979 and 1992, some in Cosby’s hotel suite in Las Vegas. They said that Cosby, now 85, had drugged or attempted to drug each of them before the assaults.
Mr Andrew Wyatt, a spokesman for Cosby, told NBC News that the plaintiffs in the case were motivated by “addiction to massive amounts of media attention and greed”.
The lawsuit is the latest of several to accuse Cosby of being a sexual predator. He was convicted of sexual assault in a Pennsylvania court in 2018 and began serving a three- to 10-year sentence.
The entertainer was released in 2021 after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned his conviction on the grounds that prosecutors had violated his rights by reneging on a promise not to charge him. Mr Wyatt described the court’s reversal at the time as a victory for black America.
But accusations of sexual misconduct have continued to trail Cosby, who starred for years in The Cosby Show, a mainstay of American television in the 1980s and early 1990s. And he now faces several new lawsuits in American states where the laws governing statutes of limitations have recently changed.
In California in 2022, a jury sided with Ms Judy Huth, who had accused Cosby of sexually assaulting her in 1975 at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles when she was 16. She was awarded US$500,000 (S$668,000).
Cosby was also sued in Los Angeles in June 2023 by Ms Victoria Valentino, a former Playboy model who accused him of drugging and sexually assaulting her in that city in 1969, after she and a friend met him for a meal in a restaurant.
The California cases were possible because state law has been changed since 2020 to extend, then temporarily lift, the statute of limitations for sexual assault filings in civil courts.
A similar process in New Jersey allowed actress and visual artist Lili Bernard to sue Cosby in 2021, accusing him of drugging and sexually assaulting her at a hotel in Atlantic City in 1990.
In Nevada, the legislature passed a law in May that revised provisions around some civil cases involving sexual assault.
The law allows people who were 18 or older when a sexual assault allegedly occurred to file lawsuits. Older state laws had already allowed people who were under 18 at the time of an alleged sexual assault to bring such cases.
Some of the nine women who filed the lawsuit on Wednesday have been involved in legal action against Cosby in other states.
One is Bernard, a former guest star on The Cosby Show. Another is model Janice Dickinson, who appeared as a witness during Cosby’s Pennsylvania trial, testifying that he had drugged and sexually assaulted her in a Lake Tahoe hotel room in 1982.
“Every state should follow Nevada’s lead and eliminate the statute of limitations for sexual assault,” said Ms Lisa Bloom, a lawyer who represented Dickinson in the Pennsylvania case. “I applaud the courage of these women for demanding justice against Bill Cosby.” NYTIMES
