Former DA Castor Settles With Bill Cosby Accuser Constand in Defamation Case
Andrea Constand had alleged that Bruce Castor, who chose not to prosecute Bill Cosby while in office, defamed her in statements about his decision.
February 01, 2019 at 10:27 AM
3 minute read
Bill Cosby's chief accuser, Andrea Constand, has settled with the former prosecutor who chose not to bring charges against the comedian in 2005, when Constand first brought her allegations.
In an order dated Jan. 28, U.S. District Senior Judge Eduardo Robreno dismissed the case, acknowledging that Constand and former Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor Jr. had settled. The suit was set to go to trial in the spring in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
Details of the settlement were not publicly available, and lawyers for the parties declined to provide additional information.
Constand, whose sexual assault allegations against Cosby ultimately led to his conviction last year, has claimed that Castor depicted her as a liar in statements he made in 2015 about his decision not to prosecute Cosby.
The civil suit dates back to October 2015, before Cosby was criminally charged. Cosby was found guilty of aggravated indecent assault in April, and was sentenced to three to 10 years in prison.
In an order filed in October denying Castor's motion for summary judgment, Robreno focused on two of Castor's statements from Constand's complaint.
In a 2015 statement to The Associated Press, Castor suggested Constand's claims in a later civil suit against Cosby went beyond her initial description of Cosby's conduct. ”If the allegations in the civil complaint were contained with that detail in her statement to the police, we might have been able to make a case out of it,” Castor told the AP at the time.
“The average reader could interpret defendant's statement alongside his decision not to prosecute Mr. Cosby to mean plaintiff lied, possibly for pecuniary gain. The implication that plaintiff lied in her civil complaint is capable of defamatory meaning,” Robreno wrote.
Even if that statement did reflect an opinion, Robreno said, Castor did not offer reasoning to back up his opinion, and it could have been based on undisclosed information he knew from his time as a prosecutor.
Robreno's order also pointed to a tweet Castor posted in September 2015: “'Inky: Cosby victim told police much different than she told court in her lawsuit. First I saw that in a story. Troublesome for the good guys. Not good.'”
Robreno said Castor's argument that the tweet was literally true, or an opinion, was not convincing enough to grant summary judgment.
Dolores Troiani and Bebe Kivitz represented Constand in the suit, and have represented her since 2005. Justin Bayer and Robert Connell Pugh of Kane Pugh Knoell & Driscoll represented Castor.
Reached for comment Friday morning, the four lawyers responded with a joint statement that said “all litigation between the parties has been resolved to the mutual satisfaction of both parties.” They declined to comment further.
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