Do we like Bill Cosby?
Our score: 1 out of 10. Two civil juries have found him liable for sexual assault, which he denies, and a big gift from decades ago doesn't balance that.
Born in Philadelphia in 1937, Cosby started in stand-up in the late 1950s and released his first album in 1963. He collected six Grammys in the late 1960s and three Emmys for I Spy, then became America's TV dad as Dr Cliff Huxtable in The Cosby Show from 1984 to 1992. For a long stretch he was about as beloved as a comedian gets.
The fall started with Andrea Constand, a Temple University staffer who accused him of drugging and sexually assaulting her at his home in 2004. A local prosecutor declined to charge him in 2005, she sued, and in sealed depositions Cosby made incriminating statements, including about Quaaludes. He settled for $3.38 million. Prosecutors reopened the case in 2015, the first jury deadlocked, and a second convicted him in 2018 with a sentence of three to 10 years.
In 2021 Pennsylvania's Supreme Court threw the conviction out and barred a retrial, ruling the earlier prosecutor's decision not to charge him should have stopped the 2015 charges. That was a ruling on process, not a finding that the accusations were false. It also wasn't the end of the legal trouble, because civil courts work to a lower bar.
In June 2022 a Los Angeles civil jury found he sexually abused Judy Huth at the Playboy Mansion in 1975 when she was 16, and awarded her $500,000. Cosby denied it through his lawyer and spokesman. In 2023 nine women filed a suit in Nevada alleging he drugged and assaulted them between 1979 and 1992. His publicist denied it all and said the women were “fueling false narratives”.
The latest verdict came in March 2026, when a Santa Monica jury found him liable for drugging and sexually assaulting Donna Motsinger in 1972. The total was $59.25 million, including $40 million in punitive damages. His lawyer Jennifer Bonjean said they would appeal, arguing the case rested on speculation. In May the judge denied his request for a new trial. AP reports at least 60 women have made accusations against him, all denied.
On the harm check, this search found no campaigning against LGBTQ+ or trans people, no conspiracy theories and nothing on the planet. I also didn't find recent projects to check his company against, so that part is a gap. The harm here is the sexual abuse two juries have found, which is harm to women, and he denies it.