In Pennsylvania, a hearing in Bill Cosby’s criminal trial is on hold after a Superior Court handed down a temporary stay while the comedian’s legal team argues to dismiss the case entirely in another court.
The Superior Court’s decision comes after Judge Steven O’Neill ruled that an agreement between Cosby’s late lawyer Walter Phillips and former Montgomery County prosecutor Bruce Castor—promising that the actor would never be prosecuted for his alleged sexual assault of Andrea Constand in 2004—did not preclude Cosby from facing criminal charges in 2016. Now Cosby’s lawyers have appealed O’Neill’s ruling, putting the upcoming criminal preliminary hearing in limbo.
Elsewhere, a lawyer for Tamara Green and seven more women suing Cosby for defamation want to depose veteran music producer Quincy Jones on March 21 because he “may have knowledge of Defendant’s history of alleged sexual assaults,” according to Masslive. Jones will be 83 this month and has faced health struggles recently, which is why Green’s lawyer wants to depose him sooner rather than later. Jones and Cosby moved to Hollywood at a similar time, worked together on 1969’s The Bill Cosby Show and have been friends for five decades. And Jones isn’t the only one on Green’s lawyer’s call sheet:
… plaintiff’s attorneys plan to call former Cosby lawyers Martin D. Singer and John P. Schmitt, spokesman David Brokaw, Jones, Jr., and they plan to demand documents from William Morris Endeavor, the former William Morris Agency which represented Cosby and where a woman who now accuses Cosby once worked and was introduced to him.
Camille Cosby, the comedian’s wife, was deposed by Green’s legal team in February for two and a half hours in the same defamation suit. These developments follow a California judge’s decision to dismiss Cosby’s attempts to toss Janice Dickinson’s defamation lawsuit against him. Cosby has also sued Constand for speaking to police about his alleged assault of her 12 years ago.
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