Nine women accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault in a lawsuit in Nevada on Wednesday, less than two months after the state changed its statute of limitations on civil suits related to the crime.
The women said in the lawsuit that the assaults took place in Nevada between 1979 and 1992, some of them in Mr. Cosby’s Las Vegas hotel suite. They said Mr Cosby, now 85, drugged or attempted to drug each of them before the assaults.
A spokesman for Mr Cosby, Andrew Wyatt, could not be immediately reached for comment on Wednesday evening. He told NBC News that the plaintiffs in this case were motivated by “addiction to massive media attention and greed.”
The lawsuit is the latest in several accusing the entertainer of being a sex offender. He was convicted of sexual assault in a Pennsylvania court in 2018 and was serving a three to 10 year sentence.
Mr. Cosby was released in 2021 after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned his conviction on the grounds that prosecutors violated his rights by failing to live up to their promise not to charge him. Mr. Wyatt described the court’s about-face at the time as a victory for both black America and women.
But Mr. Cosby, who starred for years on “The Cosby Show,” a mainstay on American television in the 1980s and early 1990s, continues to be dogged by allegations of sexual misconduct. And he now faces several new lawsuits in states where laws on the statute of limitations have recently changed.
In California last year, a jury sided with Judy Huth, who accused Mr. Cosby of sexually abusing her in 1975 at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles when she was 16. She was awarded $500,000.
Mr Cosby was also sued in Los Angeles this month by Victoria Valentino, a former Playboy model, who accused him of drugging and sexually abusing her in that city in 1969 after she and a friend took him to dinner at a restaurant had met.
The California cases were possible because since 2020 state law changed to extend the statute of limitations for sexual assault lawsuits in civil courts and then temporarily lift them.
A similar trial in New Jersey allowed Lili Bernard, an actress and visual artist, to sue Mr Cosby in 2021, accusing him of drugging and sexually abusing her at an Atlantic City hotel in 1990.
In Nevada, the state legislature passed legislation in May that revised the rules for some civil proceedings related to sexual assault. The law allows anyone who was at least 18 years old at the time of the alleged sexual assault to file a civil lawsuit. Older state laws allowed persons who were under the age of 18 at the time of an alleged sexual assault to file such complaints.
Some of the nine women who filed suits Wednesday have been involved in legal action against Mr. Cosby in other states.
One of them is Mrs. Bernard, a former guest star on The Cosby Show. Another is Janice Dickinson, a model who testified during Mr. Cosby’s trial in Pennsylvania that he drugged and sexually abused her in a Lake Tahoe hotel room in 1982.
“Every state should follow Nevada’s example and eliminate the statute of limitations on sexual assault,” said Lisa Bloom, an attorney who represented Ms. Dickinson in the Pennsylvania case. “I applaud the courage of these women in demanding justice against Bill Cosby.”