Summary: Bill Cosby’s lawyer is striving to keep embarrassing documents about his client sealed.
Bill Cosby’s lawyer has had his work cut out for him regarding damage control and PR relations. After all, over a dozen women have accused the famed comedian of sexually assaulting them, usually with the scenario of him drugging them before raping them. Now George M. Gowen III, Cosby’s lawyer, is arguing that documents from a 2005 sexual assault lawsuit should remained sealed, despite efforts from the Associated Press to publicize them. He says revealing the documents would be “terribly embarrassing” to Cosby.
“It would be terribly embarrassing for this material to come out,” said Gowen, arguing that the public should not have access to what Cosby was forced to say under oath from the accusers lawyer a decade ago. “Frankly, … it would embarrass him [and] it would also prejudice him in eyes of the jury pool in Massachusetts.”
When U.S. District Judge Eduardo Robreno questioned why Cosby would be embarrassed by his own sworn testimony, asking “Why would he be embarrassed by his own version of the facts,” Cosby’s lawyer suggested it would reveal embarrassing details about Cosby’s marriage, sex life, and prescription drug use.
The APs lawyer is arguing that Cosby, as a public figure, has less privacy rights, and further, as “an icon” who “held himself out as someone who would guide the public in ways of morality,” he should allow himself to be more open to scrutiny.
So far Cosby has been charged by three women in a defamation lawsuit in Massachusetts claiming he defamed them when he called their accusations untrue. Cosby’s lawyer is attempting to get that case thrown out before discovery.
The 2005 case regards Andrea Constand, a former Temple University employee, who accused Cosby’s of drugging her and raping her at his Main Line Pa., mansion in 2004. That lawsuit was settled confidentially.
News Source: The Root