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| Bill Cosby and his wife, Camille, laugh Nov. 6, 2014, as they tell a story about collecting one of the pieces in the exhibit “Conversations: African and African-American Artworks in Dialogue” at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art. (Evan Vucci/AP) |
Following a failed attempt to fight the subpoena, Camille Cosby will be deposed Wednesday to answer questions in court about her husband’s treatment of women.
Over the past year, dozens of women have come forward with claims that the once-renowned comedian had drugged them and assaulted them — igniting outrage and a call for action. Thirty-five women made New York magazine’s cover last year, setting off a social media campaign #TheEmptyChair, which was used by others who wanted to share their own stories.
But it’s a civil lawsuit filed by seven that will force Camille Cosby to give a deposition.
The women filed the suit against Bill Cosby, claiming that when they went public with their s*xual-assault accusations, Cosby defamed them by calling them liars. Cosby sued them back, saying the “malicious, opportunistic, false and defamatory accusations” were a mere play for money that has ruined his reputation.
He said at the time that the women’s accusations “have caused and continue to cause him to suffer substantial injuries and damages to reputation, business contracts, shame, mortification, damages to property, business, trade, profession and occupation.”
Bill and Camille Cosby were both set to be deposed in the case this year.
But their lawyers filed a motion last month claiming that Camille Cosby did not have any relevant information about the women’s accusations, according to the Associated Press, and that forcing her to testify was “nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to pressure defendant in the face of subjecting his wife to the shame and embarrassment of responding to questions about his alleged infidelities and s*xual misconduct.”
The couple have been married for more than 50 years and are business partners. Attorneys argued that Camille Cosby’s testimony would cause an “undue burden” to her.
A federal judge in Springfield, Mass., struck down her motion last week because, he said, she failed to prove that she and her husband were protected by the state’s spousal disqualification law.
The arguments “do not outweigh the potential significance of Mrs. Cosby’s testimony, nor has Mrs. Cosby provided any authority that they do,” U.S. Judge Magistrate David Hennessey wrote in his ruling, according to the Associated Press.
The Cosbys’ attorney, Monique Pressley, said Camille Cosby’s lawyers are appealing the court’s decision.
Bill Cosby was arrested and charged last week in a separate case involving Andrea Constand, a former Temple University employee who claimed that Cosby drugged and molested her at his suburban Philadelphia home more than a decade ago. The charges were filed against Cosby just days before the statute of limitations was set to expire.
Cosby, 78, was released on $1 million bail.
Amid the all of the accusations last year, Camille Cosby came to her husband’s defense, criticizing the news media for reporting the accusers’ claims without “vetting” them — a comparison she made to coverage of Rolling Stone’s problematic story about campus rape.
The magazine’s University of Virginia “story was heart-breaking, but ultimately appears to be proved to be untrue. Many in the media were quick to link that story to stories about my husband — until that story unwound,”she said in the statement at the time. “None of us will ever want to be in the position of attacking a victim. But the question should be asked — who is the victim?”
Camille Cosby said she met her husband in 1963 and the two were married the next year. Since that time, she said, he has remained the man she “fell in love with” and “a different man has been portrayed in the media.”
“The man I met and fell in love with, and whom I continue to love, is the man you all knew through his work,” she said last year. “He is a kind man, a generous man, a funny man, and a wonderful husband, father and friend. He is the man you thought you knew.”
She said the man portrayed in the media “is the portrait of a man I do not know. It is also a portrait painted by individuals and organizations whom many in the media have given a pass.”
Camille Cosby is scheduled to be deposed in the defamation case Wednesday; her husband is set to be deposed Feb. 22.
Source: washingtonpost.com
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