June 21 (UPI) -- A Los Angeles jury on Tuesday found Bill Cosby guilty of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl in 1975.
The jury of eight women and four men found Cosby, 84, liable for damages and awarded the plaintiff, Judy Huth, $500,000.
"I feel vindicated," Huth told a reporter after the verdict was delivered.
Huth filed the civil lawsuit in 2014, but civil suits were largely put on hold as prosecutors pursued a criminal case in Pennsylvania that resulted in a 2018 conviction on charges he drugged and sexually assaulted Andrea Constand.
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In the complaint, she said she and a group of other girls met Cosby at a park where he was filming a movie.
She said that Cosby invited the girls to join him at his tennis club and from there invited them to a house where he served them multiple alcoholic drinks before taking them to the Playboy Mansion.
Huth further said Cosby knew how old she and her friend were and directed them to say they were 19 if any of the Playboy bunnies asked their age.
While in the mansion, Huth said Cosby took her to a bedroom and sexually molested her.
Jury deliberations were forced to restart Monday after the panel left the question of whether Cosby acted with "malice, oppression or fraud" -- which would trigger punitive damages -- unanswered by day's end on Friday
Jurors had reached a verdict on the eight other questions on the second day of deliberations in Santa Monica Court, including whether Cosby sexually molested Huth, whether she was under 18, and whether Cosby had reason to know her age, among other questions.
Cosby, who has denied all allegations of sexual assault, was released from prison last year after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overruled his 2018 criminal conviction, fuling that there was a due process violation because Cosby had an agreement with a previous prosecutor that he wouldn't be charged in the case.
