Bill Cosby Loses Another Battle

This post is a bit off from our normal posts about personal injury and motor vehicle accident cases.  But it's an interesting twist from a famous local case.  The Bill Cosby criminal matter is being prosecuted by our friends from the Montgomery County DA's office.  Recently, a Federal appeals court in Philadelphia ruled that deposition testimony could remain "unsealed" during the criminal case.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit declared moot the question over the documents' release, which reignited controversy about the 79-year-old entertainer's alleged sexual misconduct and led in part to the criminal charges filed against him last year in Montgomery County.  "The contents of the documents are a matter of public knowledge," Circuit Judge Thomas L. Ambro wrote on behalf of a unanimous three-judge panel. "We cannot pretend that we could change that fact by ordering them resealed."  Cosby's had requested that the court overturn an earlier decision by U.S. District Judge Eduardo Robreno that opened up several previously sealed court filings from a 2005 sexual battery lawsuit filed against him by accuser Andrea Constand.

See the full article in Philly.com here.

This is a perfect example of a deposition in a civil case being used for purposes of criminal prosecution.  Often times it can come back to haunt the defendant, as it is dong to Mr. Cosby.