LOS ANGELES: Disgraced actor-comedian Bill Cosby is preparing to ask the US Supreme Court to review the defamation lawsuit filed by former supermodel Janice Dickinson against him.
The legal counsel for the 80-year-old actor, who stands convicted of sexual assault as of April, has submitted an application to justice Anthony Kennedy asking for an extension on their deadline to submit a petition seeking intervention, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Dickinson, who has also accused Cosby of drugging and raping her in the 1980s, is suing over a press statement from his former attorney Marty Singer.
As the scandal started to take shape in 2014, Singer told media outlets that the model's story was "fabricated and is an outrageous defamatory lie."
Last November, a California appeals court allowed Dickinson to move forward in her defamation lawsuit.
In the decision, California associate justice Laurence Rubin rejected Cosby's assertion that Singer's letter to media outlets merely conveyed opinion rather than provable facts.
"Cosby takes the position that the demand letter is not actionable as it is simply Singer's opinion, based on fully disclosed facts.
"We disagree. As we shall explain, nearly every factor of the totality of the circumstances test points strongly toward the conclusion that a reasonable fact finder could conclude the demand letter states or implies a provably false assertion of fact - specifically, that Cosby did not rape Dickinson, and she is lying when she says that he did," wrote Rubin.
In Cosby's application, his lawyer Becky James at Greenberg Gross highlights two of his successes on the defamation front.
"The opinion places California First Amendment law in direct conflict with the decisions of two federal courts of appeal," writes James.
"See McKee v Cosby; Hill v Cosby. Both the First and the Third Circuits held that denials by the same attorney in response to the same types of allegations against the same client are protected by the First Amendment as non-actionable opinions," she adds.
Cosby hasn't yet responded to McKee's cert petition, but now the Supreme Court will have two opportunities to weigh in on defamation law as it pertains to him.
The actor wants the Supreme Court to reassess this holding.
"In the years since Milkovich was decided, lower courts have struggled with its application, often, as here, reaching conflicting outcomes as to virtually identical statements.
Commentators have repeatedly noted the unworkability of the distinctions made in Milkovich between actionable and non-actionable statements of opinion.
"Nowhere is that unworkability more problematic than in this case, where the uncertainty in the law chills an attorney's ability to effectively represent an accused client. The Court therefore should intervene to revisit Milkovich and provide clarity as to the scope of First Amendment protection in the increasingly prevalent context of statements made in response to public accusations of misconduct," Cosby's lawyer's says in petition.
According to James, she needs 30 extra days until July 12 in order to file a petition for Supreme Court review.