From left: Attorney Jennifer Bonjean, Bill Cosby and spokesperson Andrew Wyatt speak outside of Bill Cosby's home on June 30, in Cheltenham, Pennsylvania. Photo: AFP

A nearly seven-year-old civil lawsuit alleging US celebrity Bill Cosby sexually assaulted a teen girl will move forward, a judge ruled Friday.

The lawsuit, filed in December 2014, says the disgraced comedian - who was freed from prison in Pennsylvania in June - sexually assaulted Judy Huth in 1974 when she was 15 years old.

Huth alleges Cosby assaulted her at the Playboy Mansion and that she suffered "psychological damage and mental anguish" as a result.

The case had been on hold as Cosby, 84, was facing aggravated indecent assault charges in Pennsylvania. 

After being convicted for drugging and sexually assaulting a woman, Andrea Constand, 17 years ago, Cosby was freed from his prison sentence after the state's supreme court ruled he had been denied a fair trial.

Now, a Los Angeles judge says the civil case against Cosby should proceed.

The court lifted the stay on Friday, except regarding whether Cosby must give a deposition, according to Huth's legal team.

The stay on the deposition will remain in effect until September 30, as lawyers wait to see if the US Supreme Court will review the Pennsylvania decision vacating Cosby's criminal conviction, attorney John West told AFP.

Huth's legal team said a trial date of April 18, 2022 had been set. 

"We look forward to continuing battling for our very brave client," Huth's attorney Gloria Allred told reporters.

Cosby's legal team did not respond to an AFP request for comment.

The case is understood to be the last pending legislation against Cosby.

Dozens of women have said they suffered sexual assault at the hands of the celebrity, but only Constand's allegations were tried criminally, due to expiring statutes of limitations.

Cosby, who shattered racial barriers with his Emmy-winning role on I Spy in the 1960s, was convicted in 2018 of assaulting Constand at his Philadelphia mansion in 2004.

His conviction was the first guilty verdict for sexual assault against a celebrity since the advent of the worldwide reckoning against sexual violence and abuse of power known as the #MeToo movement.

However, Cosby insisted that the encounter with Constand, who was then a Temple University employee, was consensual.

He filed his second appeal against his conviction in August 2020.

The attorneys argued it was "fundamentally unfair" that deposition testimony Cosby gave in a civil case regarding his use of sedative drugs and his sexual behaviors in the 1970s was heard in court.

He had admitted giving Quaaludes, a now banned party drug, to women with a view to having sex with them.

They argued that Cosby believed the testimony was immune from prosecution when he gave it but the acknowledgment formed a key part of his trial.

Cosby's lawyers had also argued that five women should not have been allowed to give evidence at his trial as witnesses, complaining that the "decades-old" allegations, which were not part of the charges, had prejudiced the jury.

The prosecutors had put them on the stand to convince the jury that Cosby had displayed a pattern of drugging and assaulting women.

Cosby had lost an earlier appeal when a court ruled that the prosecution's evidence had established his "unique sexual assault playbook."

In the end, the court did not exonerate Cosby, rather it overturned the conviction on a legal technicality. 

Judges wrote in a 79-page decision that a non-prosecution agreement between a former district attorney and Cosby over evidence he gave in a different civil case meant the actor shouldn't have been criminally charged for the Constand case in the first place.

"Cosby's convictions and judgment of sentence are vacated, and he is discharged," they wrote.

"We do not dispute that this remedy is both severe and rare. But it is warranted here, indeed compelled," they added.

The 83-year-old, who also starred as a dad and doctor on the hit TV series The Cosby Show in the 1980s, flashed the V sign outside his home near Philadelphia after leaving jail following the ruling. He did not answer reporters' questions.

His release from prison - he had served more than two years of his 3-to-10-year sentence - has infuriated many advocates of the #MeToo movement and his accusers.

Lawyer Lisa Bloom said she and the three Cosby accusers that she represents were "disgusted that he is a free man today."