Lawsuit: Bill Cosby's lawyers file defamation suit against Accuser Beverly Johnson

It's no joke: Bill Cosby's legal team filed a defamation lawsuit against supermodel Beverly Johnson, one of the highest-profile cases of the more than 50 women who have accused the disgraced comedian of sexual assault.

The now 62-year-old model claims that Cosby assaulted her during a fake "audition" in the mid-80s, a charge she recounted in her recent memoir, "The Face That Changed It All," and in several magazine and television interviews.

Calling Johnson's account "false, malicious, opportunistic, and defamatory," the former JELL-O pudding pitchman's team filed the suit in Superior Court of California in Los Angeles on Monday. Cosby, 78, is seeking both compensatory and punitive damages, as well as a public apology and a removal of the offending chapter of her autobiography from all unsold copies of the book.

"Seeing an opportunity to thrust herself back into the spotlight and attempt to revive her flagging career as a model, actress, and public personality, in December 2014, Defendant joined the campaign to assassinate Mr. Cosby’s reputation and character by willfully, maliciously, and falsely accusing Mr. Cosby of drugging her at his home in New York, and suggesting he did so in an effort to
have sex with Defendant,"  charges the lawsuit, a copy of which was obtained by the Daily News.

"Defendant’s false allegations against Mr. Cosby have been the centerpiece of her attempted resurgence and she has played them to the hilt, repeatedly and maliciously publishing the false accusations in articles, interviews and television appearances. She has recently published a memoir, which makes the same false statements, and has used those false allegations as a basis to generate interest in, and promote sales of, her book."

Though dozens of women have stepped forward to accuse Cosby of drugging and raping them in incidents that date back as far as the '60s, he has yet to be charged criminally.

The latest legal maneuver comes just one week after Cosby's team fired off a similar strategy against eight other accusers in a Massachusetts court.

That 89-page filing claiming Tamara Green, Therese Serignese, Linda Traitz, Louisa Moritz, Barbara Bowman, Joan Tarshis and Angela Leslie of fabricated their accounts came as a reaction to those women's previous lawsuit accusing Cosby of defaming them by calling them liars last year.

"As a result of their false, opportunistic and malicious accusations, Mr. Cosby's reputation has been irretrievably damaged, and his planned reemergence to network television destroyed as they intended," that lawsuit stated.