Cosby To Accuser: I Want My Money Back

Bill Cosby wants Andrea Constand to give back the money he paid her in a confidential settlement a decade ago, saying she violated that agreement by helping Montgomery County prosecutors build the current sexual assault case against him previous year.

The lawsuit was actually filed back on February 1, the day before Constand’s lawyer, Dolores Troiani, testified that Cosby had sued her. The testimony occurred during a hearing after Cosby’s attorneys filed a motion to have his criminal charges dismissed, notes USA Today.

“Both Andrea and Gianna Constand voluntarily sat for interviews with the district attorney, even though they were under no legal obligation to do so and the terms of the Confidential Settlement Agreement expressly prohibited such conduct”, Cosby’s attorneys wrote.

Cosby faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of sexually assaulting Constand at his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004.

Constand’s case against Cosby was reopened by prosecutors last year, just before the 12-year statute of limitations expired.

The request is part of a breach-of-contract lawsuit Cosby filed in federal court in Philadelphia earlier this month, parts of which have been unsealed this week.

A lawyer for the National Enquirer’s publisher, Boca Raton, Florida-based American Media Inc., did not immediately return a message seeking comment Thursday.

Ms Constand’s lawyers previously said the 2006 settlement included a provision that allowed them to speak to law enforcement about the case, and that any such prohibition would amount to obstruction. The said case was not prosecuted in 2005, but new prosecutors reopened the case past year.

The lawsuit is Cosby’s latest counterattack against complaints from dozens of women that he drugged and molested them.

Cosby was charged December 30 in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, with aggravated indecent assault against Constand, one in a long line of accusers and the first to go to authorities, in 2005.

The suit also faults Constand’s mother and lawyers for cooperating.

“But its filing underscores the contentious legal fight on the sidelines of the criminal case between lawyers for the 78-year-old entertainer and those who might provide evidence against him”, the Inquirer reports.

Cosby’s lawsuit also discusses the way that The New York Times was able to obtain a full copy of Cosby’s decade-old deposition from Constand’s lawsuit.

He has defamation lawsuits pending against accusers in Boston, Pittsburgh and Los Angeles.