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SANTA MONICA (CNS) - A Riverside County woman who filed a sexual battery lawsuit against Bill Cosby won a round in court today in her effort to limit the extent the comedian's attorneys can examine her medical background.
Santa Monica Superior Court Judge Craig D. Karlan's protective order ruling was in response to a subpoena Cosby's attorneys served on a physician who treated plaintiff Judy Huth, seeking all information related to her medical background. The physician is identified in Huth's court papers only as Dr. A.F.
Huth's medical records will be delivered to Cosby's chosen copying service in response to the subpoena, but the copies will then given to the plaintiff's attorneys for review so they can determine if they object to portions of the information being turned over to the defense. Any disputes would be resolved by the judge.
``It is the court's position that plaintiff is entitled to maintain her privacy rights and keep confidential any information that it is not at issue in this action confidential,'' Karlan wrote.
In their court papers, Huth's attorneys argued that while Cosby may be entitled to some of Dr. A.F's records, the subpoena was overbroad.
Cosby's records subpoena ``appears to call for production of private information that is not directly related to the lawsuit (damages), private information for which there is no compelling need for discovery, private information that is statutorily prohibited from discovery and/or private information that is not reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible information,'' Huth's lawyers argued in their papers.
Huth, 63, who lives in the gated community of Canyon Lake in Riverside County, sued Cosby, now 84, in December 2014. She alleges that in 1974, when she was 15 years old, Cosby invited her and a 16-year-old friend into a house where he convinced her to drink a beer for every game of pool he won.
Huth alleges he later took her and her friend to the Playboy Mansion, where he allegedly molested her in a bedroom.
Cosby was previously convicted in a retrial in Pennsylvania of allegations that he drugged and molested Temple University employee Andrea Constand. He was sentenced in 2018 to 10 years in prison, but that state's Supreme Court in June overturned the conviction after finding he had obtained a nonprosecution agreement from a prior prosecutor.