CAMDEN, N.J. – Counsel for comedian Bill Cosby recently lost an attempt at dismissing a lawsuit connected to Cosby’s alleged sexual assault of an up-and-coming actress in 1990.
On Jan. 3, a ruling from U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey Judge Noel Hillman disagreed with the argument presented by Cosby’s counsel, which suggested that the plaintiff Lili Bernard was outside the auspices of a New Jersey law which extended the statute of limitations for sexual assault injuries.
That statute has also been cited in sexual assault-related litigation against clergy from the Roman Catholic Church and officials from the Boy Scouts of America.
But in Hillman’s view, the law did in fact apply since Bernard 26 years old, a full-fledged adult, when the alleged assault took place and Cosby was not the subject of a criminal charge from the incident.
Bernard alleged in 1990, Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her in an Atlantic City hotel room.
In October 2021, Bernard brought suit against Cosby under a New Jersey law which extended the statute of limitations for filing sexual assault claims that would otherwise be time-barred, by two years.
According to lawyers for Cosby, the New Jersey law’s tenets pertaining to “sexual abuse” and “prohibited sexual acts” were only intended to mean relating to those under the age 18, and thus, it would not apply to Bernard.
Further citing a 2006 ruling from the Supreme Court of New Jersey in Hardwicke v. American Boychoir School, Cosby argued that since Bernard did not connect a criminal conviction against him to the assault in question, she would not have grounds to sue Cosby for injuries and damages related to that same assault.
Simply stated, Hillman did not agree.
“The revival statute unambiguously provides the two-year revival window for an action at law for an injury resulting from the commission of a sexual assault or other crime of a sexual nature. Therefore, the Court finds that the plain, unambiguous language of the statute supports the interpretation that the revival window is triggered by the commission of, rather than conviction for, a sexual assault or other sexual offense,” Hillman said.
“Had the New Jersey Legislature intended to require conviction, rather than commission, to trigger the revival window, the court finds that it surely would have done so in plain and simple language. Instead, it chose the broader term – ’commission’ – over the narrower one – conviction’. In the absence of some ambiguity – and there is none – we assume the Legislature intended the meaning of the words it used. The fact that the Legislature utilized the word ‘commit’ in the state criminal code to define a criminal act does not usurp the use of that common and ordinary word in the other legal contexts, such as here common law tort, nor does it require the Court to ascribe more meaning to it than that context would otherwise require.”
Additionally, Hillman stated that the defendant mistook “commission” for “conviction”, which “further ignores the differences between criminal and civil matters – including different objectives, evidentiary burdens, and penalties.”
Hillman also opined that Cosby’s defense argument missed a crucial point that amendments to the Child Sexual Abuse Act were intended to provide grounds for suit under an extended statute of limitations to both children and adults.
“The Court holds that this statement provides evidence of legislative intent for the revival statute to apply to adults and, logically, not be limited by the language of the CSAA. As defendant appears to understand, ‘As written, the reviver statute requires a claim to be tethered to a statutory cause of action either ‘based on sexual abuse’ or ‘resulting from’ the commission of a crime.’ The Court is not alone in finding that causes of action defined within the CSAA are not required to trigger the revival window,” Hillman said.
Last month, Bernard joined four other plaintiffs in filing another sexual assault suit against Cosby in Manhattan Supreme Court. That case is connected to an alleged sexual assault by Cosby upon Bernard at his apartment in 1991 – an allegation the comedian denies – and cites a New York law similar in spirit to the one named in the New Jersey case.
U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey case 1:21-cv-18566
From the Pennsylvania Record: Reach Courts Reporter Nicholas Malfitano at nick.malfitano@therecordinc.com