Camille Cosby deposition is postponed

Camille Cosby will not have to sit for a deposition Wednesday in a civil lawsuit filed against her husband, entertainer Bill Cosby, a federal judge in Massachusetts ruled Tuesday, as he granted her request to postpone any deposition until her lawyers have a chance to appeal.

Magistrate Judge David H. Hennessy had ruled last week Cosby must sit for the deposition despite her opposition. She was scheduled to meet Wednesday with lawyers for seven women who say Bill Cosby defamed them when his team characterized their accounts of sexual assault as fabrications.

Hennessy granted Camille Cosby’s motion for a stay to allow her lawyers to appeal his decision.

Both sides will have to wait for the U.S. District Court judge, Mark G. Mastroianni, the senior judge overseeing the case, to rule on the appeal.

A lawyer for Bill Cosby, Monique Pressley, applauded the decision. A lawyer for the seven women, Joseph Cammarata, said: “The day of reckoning will come. We expect that we ultimately will be able to take Mrs. Cosby’s deposition.”

Lawyers for Camille Cosby had tried to prevent the deposition, putting forward a variety of arguments, including that she was not a party to the litigation against Bill Cosby and has no information the opposing lawyers could not get from her husband. And, her lawyers had argued, that even though the defamation case is in federal court, her testimony could still be barred under Massachusetts’ state spousal disqualification laws. But the judge dismissed those arguments.

Bill Cosby, who was criminally charged last week in Pennsylvania in a case involving a different woman, will also be deposed in the Massachusetts lawsuit, possibly as early as next month. Cosby has long denied all of the allegations against him.

This story was originally published January 5, 2016 at 3:27 PM with the headline "Camille Cosby deposition is postponed."