A California jury in a civil case ruled on Tuesday that Bill Cosby sexually assaulted a woman at the Playboy Mansion in 1975 when she was a teenager and ordered the comedian to pay her $500 000 in damages for emotional distress from the incident.

Judy Huth had testified that the comedian invited her and a friend to the mansion when she was 16, and he was 37, and forced her to perform a sex act.

The verdict came nearly a year after Cosby was freed from prison when Pennsylvania's highest court threw out his sexual assault conviction in a different criminal case there.

Huth's lawsuit was the first civil case against Cosby to come to trial.

Huth, now 64, said she was "elated" by the ruling in the case, which she filed in 2014 after media reports detailed accusations against Cosby by multiple women. Those reports helped stir up memories of her encounter with Cosby, Huth said, and triggered four years of anxiety and other symptoms.

"It's been so many years, so many tears," Huth told reporters outside California Superior Court in Santa Monica. "It's been a long time coming."

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