A California civil jury on Monday found Bill Cosby liable for drugging and sexually assaulting Donna Motsinger in 1972, awarding her $19.25 million in damages after nearly two weeks of testimony in Santa Monica.
Cosby is 88. Motsinger is 84. The assault she alleged happened 54 years ago. The verdict was unanimous.
The jury awarded Motsinger $17.5 million for past mental suffering and $1.75 million for future suffering.
In a separate finding, jurors determined that Cosby had acted with malice, oppression, or fraud, a finding that opens a second phase of the trial focused on punitive damages, the amount of which has not yet been announced.
The defense said immediately after the verdict that Cosby would appeal.
This is the second time a Santa Monica civil jury has ruled against Cosby. In 2022, a jury in the same courthouse found him liable for sexually abusing Judy Huth at the Playboy Mansion in 1975, when she was 16, and ordered him to pay $500,000. The Motsinger verdict dwarfs that figure.
What Happened In 1972?
Donna Motsinger was 29 years old and working as a waitress at The Trident, a popular restaurant in Sausalito, California, when she first met Bill Cosby.
He befriended her and later invited her to attend the taping of his standup special, Inside the Mind of Bill Cosby, at the Circle Star Theater in nearby San Carlos. She accepted.
According to her lawsuit and trial testimony, Cosby picked her up in a limousine.
During the ride, he gave her wine that made her feel ill. He then gave her two small round white pills, telling her they were aspirin. She took them. She began losing consciousness.
The last things she remembers are flashes of light. She woke up at her home wearing only her underwear, no top, no bra, no pants. She said she knew immediately what had happened.
Motsinger kept her story largely to herself for decades. In 2005, when Andrea Constand filed a civil lawsuit against Cosby for sexually assaulting her in 2004, Motsinger agreed to come forward as a witness under the name Jane Doe Number 8. Cosby settled that lawsuit privately in 2006.
Motsinger filed her own lawsuit in September 2023, revived under California’s Sexual Abuse and Cover Up Accountability Act, which allows otherwise time-barred sexual assault claims to proceed if certain statutory conditions are met.
The Deposition That Decided Everything
Cosby did not appear at trial. He said in his own deposition that he no longer travels, he is, by his account, afraid to be in crowds, on airplanes, trains, or buses due to negative publicity.
He did not testify. The jury heard from him only through a videotaped deposition that his own words turned into the most damaging evidence against him.
In the recording, played by Motsinger’s attorney Spencer Lucas during closing arguments, Cosby acknowledged that he had obtained a prescription for Quaaludes from a physician during a poker game.
Asked whether the prescription was written at the poker table, Cosby answered, “Yes.” Asked whether, when he got that prescription, he already had in mind giving the pills to women he wanted to have sex with, Cosby answered, “Yes.”
Asked how he knew a woman who received a Quaalude from him was capable of giving consent, Cosby answered, “I didn’t.”
Lucas told jurors that Cosby had refilled that prescription seven times, accumulating 210 pills in total. The physician who wrote the prescriptions, a gynecologist named Dr. Leroy Amar whom Cosby knew personally, later lost his California medical license in 1979.
Cosby denied in the deposition having any memory of sexually assaulting Motsinger specifically, but acknowledged he had wanted to have sex with her.
The defense, led by attorney Jennifer Bonjean, maintained throughout trial that the deposition clips were being taken out of context and that any encounter between Cosby and Motsinger was consensual. The jury disagreed.
Who Else Testified In This Trial?
Over the course of the nearly two-week trial, jurors heard from several witnesses beyond Motsinger herself. Andrea Constand, whose 2005 civil lawsuit first brought Motsinger into the public record as Jane Doe Number 8, and whose 2004 assault led to Cosby’s 2018 criminal conviction, later overturned, testified again on Motsinger’s behalf, describing in detail the night Cosby gave her three pills at his suburban Philadelphia home and sexually assaulted her.
Two other accusers, Victoria Valentino and Janice Baker Kinney, also testified, called by Motsinger’s legal team to establish a pattern of conduct.
Cosby’s 2018 criminal conviction had been overturned by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 2021, on the grounds that he had relied on a non-prosecution agreement with a prior prosecutor that barred criminal charges in exchange for his civil deposition testimony in the Constand case.
That overturning freed him from prison. It did not, as Monday’s verdict makes clear, resolve the civil exposure he continues to face.
What Happens Next?
The punitive damages phase of the trial will follow, with jurors set to determine an additional financial penalty beyond the $19.25 million already awarded.
Cosby’s attorney has confirmed the defense intends to appeal the verdict. Cosby himself, who has maintained through representatives that all of his sexual encounters were consensual, has not commented publicly.
Motsinger, speaking after the verdict, called it justice, justice that took 54 years to arrive.
“This jury is sending a strong message that rapists will be held accountable, even if half a century has passed,” said Caroline Heldman, a professor at Occidental College and co-founder of Stand With Survivors, who attended the trial throughout.
The punitive damages figure is expected to be announced today.
