Model Janice Dickinson has declared an "epic" victory in her defamation case against Bill Cosby.
The supermodel and her lawyer, Lisa Bloom, said Thursday they've settled their four-year legal battle with Cosby's insurance provider against the comedian's wishes.
Dickinson sued Cosby in May 2015, saying he intentionally defamed her when his lawyer issued statements that branded her a liar after she stepped forward with claims Cosby drugged and raped her in a Lake Tahoe hotel room in 1982.
"A settlement is a victory and certainly a measure of justice and helps me sleeps better, but in reality, nothing can ever erase the experience and memories of the assault," Dickinson said Thursday.
"Jail is where he belongs," she said of Cosby. "But there aren't enough years left for him to pay for what he has done to so very many, many women."
Dickinson said she was drugged and raped "by a monster," and her life "from then went into a downward spiral."
"I became different. I lost that innocence," she said.
Bloom said the financial terms of the deal were confidential, but the pact allows Dickinson to speak freely about her experience with Cosby.
"I can't tell you the number, but I can say that it is an epic amount which is a powerful statement from Bill Cosby's own insurance company over his objections," Bloom said. "Janice has won her case."
Speaking to the New York Daily News, Bloom said the deal with insurance company AIG was actually reached last month before she presented an oral argument in California's 2nd Appellate District on Cosby's second appeal in the case.
She alerted the appeals court to the tentative agreement, but the judges moved ahead with the arguments on June 27 on Cosby's attempt to overturn a lower court ruling and get the case dismissed, she said.
"I have never seen an appellate panel more friendly to one side and more hostile to another side as in this case," she told The News, adding the court later issued a tentative ruling in Dickinson's favor.
While a final ruling from the appeals court is still pending, Bloom's firm filed case dismissal paperwork that was awaiting a stamp from the Los Angeles County Superior Court on Thursday.
Cosby tried to get the case spiked by arguing the statements against Dickinson were issued by his lawyer, not him, and either way they amounted to free speech.
The lower court disagreed, saying enough evidence existed to suggest Cosby approved the statements.
Cosby, 82, is now in a Pennsylvania prison after he was convicted last year of drugging and sexually assaulting former Temple University staffer Andrea Constand at his suburban Philadelphia mansion in 2004.
He was sentenced to three to 10 years behind bars for the three felony counts.
Cosby filed a separate appeal of the criminal conviction last month, arguing the trial judge erred repeatedly, including when he allowed Dickinson and four other women to testify before jurors that Cosby drugged and assaulted them.
Cosby claimed the five "prior bad act" witnesses should have been excluded from his April 2018 trial along with damaging deposition testimony in which Cosby admitted he kept Quaaludes on hand to give to women he found sexually attractive.
Speaking Thursday, Dickinson and Bloom said her testimony at the trial was the "right thing to do."
At the trial, Dickinson testified under oath that the comedian personally called her while she was in rehab in Bali and paid for her to fly to Reno, Nev., so they could meet and discuss her career.
She trusted him, she said. She was 27 and he was 45.
"He was 'America's Dad,' very well respected," the former supermodel and reality TV star said.
Dickinson said Cosby tempted her with red wine, despite knowing she'd been in treatment for alcoholism. When she complained of menstrual cramps, he urged her to take a pill that he provided, she said.
The pill rendered her "motionless," she testified.
"He got on top of me and his robe opened. ... I remember he smelled like cigars and espresso," Dickinson said.
"Before I passed out, I felt pain between my legs," she testified, adding that she was certain she was penetrated.
Dickinson first went public with her claim in 2014. Cosby's lawyer at the time, Marty Singer, quickly called her out as a liar, citing her 2002 memoir, "No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World's First Supermodel."
In the book, Dickinson said she had dinner with Cosby that night in 1982 and received "the dirtiest, meanest look in the world" from him when she declined to go back to his hotel room.
Dickinson testified that she tried to include the rape claim in the memoir, but HarperCollins forced her to take it out. She only went along with the sanitized version because she needed the money, she testified.
Speaking Thursday, Bloom thanked several people involved in editing the book for stepping up and agreeing to testify that Dickinson told them about the alleged rape before the book was published.
"If we went to trial, we were going to have a huge win," Bloom told The News. "Janice had five witnesses that we had locked into sworn statements years ago who were willing to support her."
