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With Cosby case, lawyer Gloria Allred again finds herself in scandal's spotlight

 
Lawyer Gloria Allred is undertaking a very public quest to take down Cosby.
Lawyer Gloria Allred is undertaking a very public quest to take down Cosby.
Published Nov. 24, 2015

The face-off went down somewhere in Boston and stretched on for more than seven hours.

That's all we know about the day Gloria Allred grilled Bill Cosby. What happened at that early October deposition, regarding allegations that the comedian assaulted more than 50 women, remains a secret until a judge decides what sections, if any, to unseal.

But it's easy to envision Allred taking on the task with glee.

The attorney's many critics say she basks in scandal's spotlight, with a clientele of wronged porn stars, celebrity mistresses under attack, employees allegedly fired for being well-endowed.

"She has never seen a camera she didn't like," said celebrity defense lawyer Thomas Mesereau.

Now the oft-vilified, 74-year-old feminist icon's spectacularly public quest to take down the once-revered 78-year-old fatherly icon is giving the public yet another chance to figure out Allred's place in history.

A week after she interrogated the man she has referred to as a public moralizer in need of punishment, Allred deflected direct questions about Cosby with broad answers about the nature of fame.

"Many celebrities suffer from the arrogance of power and the sense of entitlement," she said. "They surround themselves with 'yes people' who are afraid to give them the truth about anything. They get their moment of truth from me."

Allred's supporters think this unapologetic forcefulness inspires clients to seek her out, including more than half of those accusing Cosby of sexual assault.

One of them, Judy Huth, has taken legal action, alleging Cosby took her hand to perform a sex act on him in the 1970s when she was 15. Allred successfully argued Huth was not precluded by statutes of limitation because she discovered the psychological harm within the last three years.

In the other cases, Allred acts as publicist and advocate, wrapping an arm around accusers as they read their emotional statements to reporters. For most of these women, it is the first time they have publicly alleged that Cosby raped, molested or abused them.

Feminist Gloria Steinem said Allred's reputation as a staunch adversary impels women to come forward and risk ridicule.

"She will certainly be remembered as someone who was brave," Steinem said. "She has the revolutionary idea that the law might have something to do with justice. She takes on conflict, which is often difficult for women to do. We're socialized to seek approval. I think we're all very grateful to her for her willingness to be public."

Allred has jumped at every chance to publicly rattle Cosby's cage, firing up the troops at rallies to protest his comedy tour, testifying in front of Nevada lawmakers in support of extending the statute of limitations for criminal prosecution of rape.

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Like Cosby, Allred is a Philadelphia native. An only child, she was raised in a brick row house by a stay-at-home mother and a door-to-door salesman father whose meager earnings covered groceries and the trolley fare she needed to get to school. Decades later, she would take in her ailing parents and care for them in their last years of life.

After graduating from the Philadelphia High School for Girls — around the corner from Cosby's then-all-boys alma mater, Central High — she went to the University of Pennsylvania. There she met her first husband and was pregnant at 19. The relationship soon ended in divorce.

A single mother, Allred found work as an assistant buyer at a Gimbel Brothers department store but said she quit after learning a male counterpart was making more money. She moved on to teach at a boys' high school while earning a master's degree in education. The mild weather of Los Angeles beckoned and she took a job at a high school in Watts.

Her calling changed when the life story she repeatedly has told took a dark turn: While on vacation in Acapulco, she was raped by a local doctor. An illegal abortion left her hemorrhaging and close to death. She recovered with a newfound motivation: to effect change through the law.

"She has always been a force to reckon with," said Nathan Goldberg, who met Allred at Loyola Law School. The two, along with Michael Maroko, started their own firm in 1976.

"Gloria wanted to educate the public — so few women knew their rights," Maroko said.

That meant calling news conferences for what no doubt struck some as trifling issues: suing Sav-On Drugstore for creating gender-specific toy sections, fighting a dry cleaner that charged 40 cents more for women's shirts than men's.

One of Allred's earliest causes was elevating the profile of the lead plaintiff in Roe v. Wade.

Norma McCorvey was known only as Jane Doe, and her anonymity was lifted when she befriended Allred, who guided her into the national dialogue on abortion. McCorvey, who shocked the nation when she had a change of heart and became an anti-abortion activist, detailed their friendship in a 1998 memoir.

Allred, she said, taught her "how to behave in the strange world of press releases, news conferences and interviews. Because of her acceptance and patience, I still love her to this day. 'Norma,' Gloria would say, 'you're a diamond in the rough, but I'm gonna make you shine.' "

According to Allred and her partners, the firm has won more than $250 million in civil payouts in the past decade.

On her website, Allred calls herself "the most famous woman attorney in the world", repeated in her biography Fight Back and Win. Her life has inspired a CBS legal drama that is in the works.

Well-known trial attorney Mark Geragos said he learned a lot about Allred when she represented Amber Frey, the lover of his client, Scott Peterson, who was convicted of killing his pregnant wife. Allred is so polarizing, he said, that some become unsympathetic to anyone she represents.

"You love her or you hate her," he said.