A civil jury in Los Angeles found that disgraced actor and comedian Bill Cosby drugged and raped a former waitress in 1972, according to multiple reports.
The former waitress, 84-year-old Donna Motsinger, will be awarded $59.25 million — $19.25 million for noneconomic damages and $40 million in punitive damages, the jury decided.
Motsinger, who filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court in September 2023, was a server at The Trident, a now-closed restaurant in Sausalito, California, that Cosby and other celebrities frequented. Once, Cosby invited her to a show at the Circle Star Theater in San Carlos, California. He picked her up from her home in a limo and gave her a glass of wine that eventually made her feel sick.
“The last thing Ms. Motsinger recalls were flashes of light. She woke up in her house with all her clothes off, except her underwear on — no top, no bra, and no pants. She knew she had been drugged and raped by Bill Cosby,” the complaint said.
Motsinger said Cosby “intentionally deprived” her of “freedom of movement” by “fraudulently and deceitfully drugging and sedating her without her knowledge or consent to the point of unconsciousness.”
