Comedian and accused serial rapist Bill Cosby may soon face on-the-record questioning about allegations he sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl in 1974, a lawyer representing the woman in a civil suit says.
In a press release on Wednesday, lawyer Gloria Allred said she would seek to take his deposition "as soon as possible" within the next 30 days, after the California Supreme Court refused to review a petition by Cosby to block the suit.
The woman in the case, Judy Huth, says Cosby assaulted her at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles in 1974.
Los Angeles prosecutors last year decided against filing charges of child molestation because the statute of limitations had expired. Huth filed a civil suit against Cosby in December.
More than two dozen women have accused Cosby of sexually assaulting them in past decades, many telling similar tales of being slipped knockout drugs by the comic. Several have filed civil suits against him alleging defamation.
Cosby, 78, has never been charged with a crime, and has denied all wrongdoing.
But in a deposition in a 2005 civil suit by another woman, Andrea Constand, Cosby admitted to acquiring prescription sedatives to give to young women he wanted to have sex with. The transcript was unsealed July 7 after requests by the Associated Press.
Cosby and Constand settled out of court in 2006 for an undisclosed sum.
Transcripts of other depositions in the case obtained by the New York Times showed Cosby admitted to paying women to keep quiet about their sexual encounters, the New York Times reported.
Upon the release of the deposition earlier this month, Judge Eduardo C. Robreno Jr said Cosby's decision to enter the public sphere as an entertainer and social commentator meant he "voluntarily narrowed the zone of privacy that he is entitled to claim".
Since then, Constand's lawyers have filed papers in a Pennsylvania court asking for a judge to void the confidentiality agreement and release the full deposition and settlement information.
A new lawyer representing Cosby, Monique Pressley, on Tuesday slammed the release of the testimony, saying it made a "mockery" of the confidentiality agreement that was a key part of the settlement, NBC News reported.
Cosby's lawyers are now demanding Constand pay back part of her settlement funds if she continues to push for a judge to make the details of their confidential agreement public.
They are seeking "sanctions" against Constand if she successfully has the lawsuit documents released to the press.
His lawyers claim it is unfair for Constand to keep the settlement money while violating the confidentiality clause, accusing her of wanting to "have her cake and eat it too".
Since the allegations surfaced in November, Cosby has seen his career and reputation as America's gently chiding father figure crumble, as his performances and productions have been cancelled across the country, along with reruns of his hit 1980s TV series, The Cosby Show.
On Wednesday, publisher Simon & Schuster removed celebrity endorsements from a new Cosby biography and killed plans for revised or paperback editions of the book, Entertainment Weekly reported.
Blurbs from Billy Crystal, Mary Tyler Moore, Jerry Seinfeld and David Letterman will not appear in promotions for the book after the actors and comedians requested they be disassociated from Cosby, according to the report.
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