A Los Angeles judge ruled that former model Janice Dickinson’s defamation lawsuit against Bill Cosby can move forward and proceed to court.
According to Janice, Mr. Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her in a Nevada hotel room in 1982 — which he has denied. She filed her suit last spring after Cosby’s attorney Marty Singer dismissed her accusations in the press.
via NBC:
“Janice Dickinson, like over three dozen other Cosby victims, recently publicly disclosed that she was drugged and raped by Bill Cosby,” Dickinson’s attorneys wrote in their complaint on her behalf last year. “In retaliation, Cosby, through an attorney, publicly branded her a liar and called her rape disclosure a lie with the intent and effect of revictimizing her and destroying the professional reputation she’s spent decades building.”
Singer first addressed Dickinson’s claims in a November 2014 statement. “There is a glaring contradiction between what she is claiming now for the first time and what she wrote in her own book and what she told the media back in 2002,” he said. “The only story she gave 12 years ago to the media and in her autobiography was that she refused to sleep with Mr. Cosby and he blew her off.”
“Documentary proof and Ms. Dickinson’s own words show that her new story about something she now claims happened back in 1982 is a fabricated lie,” he added at the time.
On Tuesday, Dickinson’s attorney and frequent MSNBC contributor Lisa Bloom, applauded the judge’s decision on social media. “VICTORY. Court rules we go to trial against Bill Cosby. Huge win for my client Janice Dickinson. Thanks to my hardworking Bloom Firm team!,” she tweeted.
Bloom and her mother, attorney Gloria Allred, have represented several of Cosby’s accusers, many of whom have grown increasingly vocal about their alleged abuse and may be willing to testify in court against him.
Dickinson had previously alluded to an inappropriate encounter with Cosby during a 2006 appearance on “The Howard Stern Show,” during which she claimed that publishers of her 2002 memoir ”No Lifeguard on Duty” forced her to not detail what occurred in order to avoid lawsuits. In the wake of renewed attention on past allegations of assault against Cosby — which he has denied — Dickinsonmade rounds in the media during which she recounted disturbing memories of an alleged rape by the comedian.
“The next morning I woke up, and I wasn’t wearing my pajamas, and I remember before I passed out that I had been sexually assaulted by this man,” she said during an appearance on “Entertainment Tonight” in 2014. “… Before I woke up in the morning, the last thing I remember was Bill Cosby in a patchwork robe, dropping his robe and getting on top of me. And I remember a lot of pain. The next morning I remember waking up with my pajamas off and there was semen in between my legs.”
Several dozen women have told similar stories in the last year and a half alleging predatory behavior by Cosby.
It looks like Janice will be seeing Mr. Cosby in court!
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