More legal punches in Cosby case
Its never ending: More accusations by lawyers surrounding release of Cosbys deposition transcript.
THE LEGAL PUNCHES continue to get thrown in the Bill Cosby sex scandal.
Patrick O'Connor, one of the actor-comedian's attorneys at the Cozen O'Connor firm in Philadelphia, on Friday filed a brief saying that lawyers for three of Cosby's accusers "have chosen 'the nuclear option'" by filing a motion asking for Cosby's legal team to be financially sanctioned.
O'Connor was responding to an Aug. 7 motion filed by Joseph Cammarata, of Washington, and Robert Sachs, of Philadelphia, plaintiffs' attorneys for Cosby accusers Tamara Green, Therese Serignese and Linda Traitz.
In their Aug. 7 motion, Cammarata and Sachs asked U.S. District Judge John Padova in Philadelphia to compel Cosby's attorneys at Cozen O'Connor to pay their attorneys' fees, which are being incurred in litigating an earlier July 24 motion filed by O'Connor.
Do you feel like you're going around in circles yet?
O'Connor's July 24 motion asked Padova to allow Cosby and his lawyers "to take discovery on the circumstances surrounding the release of the complete transcript of [Cosby's] deposition to The New York Times and to other media organizations."
Cosby "simply wishes to learn what happened," O'Connor wrote in Friday's filing, regarding how the New York Times and other news outlets obtained the complete transcript of Cosby's confidential two-day 2005 deposition in a civil lawsuit brought by former Temple University employee Andrea Constand.
Constand, who sued Cosby in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia in March 2005, had worked at Temple University as the women's basketball's director of operations. She accused Cosby of drugging and sexually assaulting her in his Cheltenham home in 2004. Her lawsuit was settled under a confidential agreement two years later.
U.S. District Judge Eduardo Robreno, assigned to preside over Constand's civil case, had on July 6 unsealed several motions and other court documents in the civil lawsuit. The court filings, unsealed at the request of the Associated Press, contained excerpts of Cosby's deposition, and quoted him saying he obtained Quaaludes to give women before sexual encounters.
In Constand's case, Cosby said he engaged in consensual activities with her after giving her Benadryl pills for stress.
Cosby's complete deposition had been under seal, but the New York Times obtained it from the court-reporting service Kaplan Leaman & Wolfe, hired by Constand's lawyer, Dolores Troiani. The newspaper published an article about the complete transcript over the July 18-19 weekend.
Green, Serignese and Traitz had filed lawsuits against Cosby in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts. They accused Cosby of defaming them when his agents denied that he had sexually abused them in the 1970s, the Associated Press has reported.
The three women have sought to obtain documents in Constand's Philadelphia case to support their cases. Padova was assigned to preside over their civil requests.
The three women's attorneys, in their Aug. 7 motion seeking sanctions on the Cozen O'Connor lawyers, contended Cosby's lawyers were "vexatiously" multiplying the legal proceedings by filing their "frivolous" July 24 motion for discovery.
O'Connor, in his filing Friday before Padova, asked the judge to deny Cammarata's and Sachs' motion for sanctions. He contended that the three women and their attorneys "are wasting this Court's resources."
Cosby, now 78, has never been charged with a crime and has repeatedly denied accusations of sexual assault.
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