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 The eight-page complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in
Springfield, Massachusetts, is at least the third lawsuit
arising from a wave of sexual misconduct allegations leveled
against Cosby by more than a dozen women during the past several
years.
The plaintiff in Wednesday's case, Tamara Green, 66, a lawyer
who lives near San Diego, claims Cosby drugged her at a Los
Angeles cafe with pills he told her were cold tablets, then
sexually assaulted her at her apartment, leaving her two $100
bills on a coffee table before he left.
The alleged assault occurred in the early 1970s, the lawsuit
said, while Green, then an aspiring model and singer, was
helping Cosby raise money from investors to open a club.
Neither the onetime network television star, who now resides in
western Massachusetts, nor his attorney or spokesman was
immediately available for comment.
The lawsuit said previous denials by an attorney and a publicist
representing Cosby in response to those allegations when they
were published in Newsweek magazine in February and the
Washington Post in November were false and defamatory.
Green is seeking unspecified punitive damages, asserting that
Cosby himself is liable for the conduct of his legal and press
representatives.
The complaint was filed on her behalf by Joseph Cammarata, an
attorney who initially represented Paula Jones in her sexual
harassment lawsuit in the late 1990s against then-President Bill
Clinton.
Cammarata and his client said her defamation suit provides a new
avenue for Green and others accusing Cosby, 77, of sexually
assaulting them decades ago to bring their allegations to court
without complications posed by statutes of limitations.
'HIS DAY IN COURT'
“I want it put to a jury. I want it to be ended, finally, and I
want my name restored,” Green said by video link during a news
conference at Cammarata's Washington law office.
"Bill Cosby will also have his day in court," she said, "and I
look forward to that event."
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Green's lawsuit comes eight days after another of Cosby's accusers,
Judy Huth, sued the entertainer in Los Angeles, saying he molested
her in 1974 when she was 15 at the Playboy Mansion after serving her
alcohol. Huth claims that trauma from the incident caused
psychological anguish that she has come to terms with only in the
last few years.
Green first came forward with her story in a 2005 "Today" show
appearance and a Philadelphia Inquirer interview. Cosby's lawyer
dismissed the allegations as false.
The following year, Cosby settled for an undisclosed sum a lawsuit
brought by another woman, Andrea Constand, who also claimed he had
drugged and sexually assaulted her.
Such accusations gained renewed attention after standup comic
Hannibal Buress called Cosby a rapist during a performance in
October. Cosby's camp unwittingly intensified the scandal on Twitter
by asking supporters to create viral online parodies, or "memes,"
about him, only to be barraged with Internet satires about the rape
allegations.
Cosby has never been criminally charged, and through his lawyers has
insisted none of the allegations is true. During a National Public
Radio interview in November, Cosby silently refused to answer
questions put to him about the scandal.
NBC and Netflix last month canceled Cosby projects, and reruns of
his top-rated sitcom, "The Cosby Show," were pulled from cable
channel TV Land, all without explanation. On Dec. 1, he resigned
from the board of trustees of Temple University, his Philadelphia
alma mater.
(Writing and additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles;
Editing by Cynthia Johnston, Susan Heavey and Mohammad Zargham)
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