The widely accused comedian and his former lawyer will not be sitting down to answer questions from Janice Dickinson’s attorneys in the next two weeks – at least right now. The California Court of Appeals on Thursday issued a temporary stay in the depositions of Bill Cosby and Marty Singer in the defamation suit brought by the former America’s Next Top Model judge. The depositions, ordered on November 2 by L.A. Superior Court Judge Debra Weintraub, were scheduled to take place November 19 and November 23.
The appeals court hit the pause button so it could hear more briefs in the matter, after Cosby’s lawyers at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan moved the matter to the 2nd District Court of Appeal. “We are confident that once the court of appeals hears full argument on the issues it will allow the deposition of Mr. Cosby and his attorney to go forward,” said Dickinson’s attorney Lisa Bloom in a statement on Thursday.
In the defamation case Dickinson filed this spring the former supermodel said Singer, who is not a defendant in the the matter, called her account of being raped by Cosby in 1982 “a lie” on November 19, 2014. A press statement on November 18, 2014, also disputed the truth of Dickinson’s claim. Cosby and his longtime lawyer split in late October with Christopher Tayback of Quinn Emanuel taking over the actor’s legal needs.
With claims from more than four dozen women plus Dickinson that Cosby drugged and assaulted them over the past four decades, those legal needs are a burgeoning matter. On October 9, The Cosby Show creator was deposed in Boston for hours in the case of Judy Huth. That deposition may become public next month if the judge doesn’t deem its content private. Earlier this week, Cosby was sued for defamation by another women in Massachusetts. More women, including One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest actress Louisa Moritz, are expected to join a defamation case already before the courts in Massachusetts. While the statue of limitations restricts movement on the assault allegations, statements by Cosby’s lawyers like Singer are within the realm of legal action.
In July, a previously sealed 2005 deposition by Cosby revealed that the actor admitted he had Quaaludes prescriptions in the 1970s that he intended to give to women he wanted to have sex with. The deposition was from a sexual assault case brought by Andrea Constand, a case that was later settled.
