If hard cases make bad law, celebrity cases make for even worse legal decisions. A tortuous trail of civil and criminal actions, dubious agreements, evasions and appeals involving disgraced entertainer Bill Cosby led this week to a Los Angeles jury’s decision to award $59.25 million in compensatory and punitive damages to Donna Motsinger, who claimed she was drugged and raped by Bill Cosby in 1972.

Motsinger is one of more than 60 women who have made similar claims. Some date back more than half a century. The jury reached its decision in the same Santa Monica courthouse where, 3½ years ago, another jury awarded $500,000 to Judy Huth, who claimed Cosby sexually assaulted her at a party at Hugh Hefner’s Playboy mansion in 1975.

On Wednesday, the jury in Motsinger’s case upped the award against Cosby by a factor of 120. And this time, the $40 million in punitive damages made up the bulk of the award. Now 84, she was a 31-year-old waitress at a restaurant Cosby frequented in 1972 when he invited her to his comedy show. She testified he gave her pills that she believed were aspirin when she felt unwell after drinking a glass of wine he had offered her. She then lapsed into unconsciousness and later awoke realising she had been raped.

In some respects, Huth’s case was more egregious. She was just 15 in 1975 when Cosby, then aged 35, met her and her friend in a public park near their home in a Los Angeles suburb.........

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