Bill Cosby Ordered to Pay $60 Million to Sexual Assault Victim Donna Motsinger

A California jury in Santa Monica ordered Bill Cosby to pay a total of just under $60 million in damages to Donna Motsinger on Monday, March 23, 2026, finding the 88-year-old former television star liable for drugging and sexually assaulting her in 1972. The jury first awarded Motsinger 19.25 (million USD) — compensatory damages awarded to Donna Motsinger in compensatory damages, then added a further $40 million in punitive damages, bringing the total to just under $59.25 million. Cosby did not appear in court and denied the allegations through his lawyer, Jennifer Bonjean. Motsinger, now 84, spoke outside the courthouse after the verdict was announced following three days of deliberation.

Bill Cosby civil damages awards: Compensatory damages (Motsinger, 2026) (before: Claim filed 2023, after: $19.25 million awarded); Punitive damages (Motsinger, 2026) (before: Separate jury step, after: $40 million awarded); Damages awarded to Judy Huth (2022) (before: Assault in 1975, after: $500,000 awarded)

„It took 54 years for justice to happen” — Donna Motsinger via Focus

Motsinger described the monetary sum as incidental, according to reporting by Blick.ch, saying what mattered was that she was believed and that Cosby was held accountable. The verdict came on the third day of deliberations in the same Santa Monica courthouse where Cosby had previously faced a civil judgment.

A limousine ride, a glass of wine, and a lost night

According to court documents cited across multiple outlets, Motsinger was working as a waitress at the Trident restaurant in Sausalito, near San Francisco, when she first encountered Cosby in 1972. He invited her to a comedy performance and arranged for a limousine to collect her. During the ride, he offered her a glass of wine and what he described as an aspirin tablet. After consuming the drink and the pill, Motsinger testified that she lost consciousness repeatedly, with the last thing she remembered being flashes of light. She woke up in her own apartment wearing only her underwear. The complaint, as cited by multiple sources, stated that she understood she had been drugged and raped by Cosby. Cosby's defense team argued that Motsinger herself admitted she could not recall the precise sequence of events, and his lawyers stated that he had no memory of any sexual contact with her, adding that if sex had occurred it had been consensual, according to Zeit Online.

Bonjean vows appeal as Cosby denies all wrongdoing

Cosby did not attend the proceedings in person but submitted a sworn statement rejecting the accusations, according to Zeit Online. Jennifer Bonjean, his attorney, announced after the verdict that she would appeal the decision. Bonjean had previously characterized the lawsuit as unfounded and dismissed Motsinger's account as speculative, according to Blick.ch. Cosby has consistently denied all allegations brought against him across decades of legal proceedings. The civil case was made possible by a California law that expanded the statute of limitations for sexual violence claims, which Motsinger used when she filed her lawsuit in 2023, more than 50 years after the alleged assault. Cosby, by his own account, has run into financial difficulties, according to the New York Times as cited in web search results.

Criminal conviction overturned, but civil cases mount

Bill Cosby rose to national prominence in the United States through his stand-up comedy career and later through "The Cosby Show," a sitcom broadcast from 1984 to 1992 in which he played a lovable doctor and family father. Accusations of drugging and sexually assaulting women, some dating back to the 1960s, began accumulating publicly in the early 2000s and accelerated significantly in the mid-2010s, with dozens of women coming forward. In 2018, Cosby was convicted in Pennsylvania in a criminal trial for the sexual assault of Andrea Constand, a former employee of Temple University, and sentenced to a prison term of several years. He was released in 2021 after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned the conviction, ruling that prosecutors had improperly used a confession Cosby had given under an earlier agreement that it would never be used against him in a criminal case.

The Santa Monica jury's verdict against Cosby in the Motsinger case is the second major civil judgment issued against him in that courthouse. In 2022, a jury in the same court ordered Cosby to pay $500,000 to Judy Huth, finding that he had sexually assaulted her in 1975 when she was 16 years old, according to multiple source articles. Cosby subsequently withdrew his appeal in the Huth case, according to Blick.ch. The wave of civil litigation against Cosby has been enabled in part by legal reforms in California and other states that followed the broader cultural reckoning over sexual misconduct. Dozens of women have publicly accused Cosby of similar conduct over several decades. The $40 million punitive damages component of Monday's award reflects the jury's decision to go beyond compensation and impose a penalty intended to punish and deter, a mechanism common in the American civil legal system.