Story highlights Cosby defamation lawsuit dismissed

He has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than 50 women

(CNN) A federal judge in Massachusetts dismissed a defamation lawsuit against Bill Cosby by Katherine McKee, an actress who claimed he raped her in 1974, according to court documents.

McKee's sexual assault allegation first appeared in a New York Daily News article in 2014. After the article was published, Cosby wrote a letter to the paper denying the claim. His lawyer asked the paper to retract the article, according to Cosby spokesman Andrew Wyatt.

McKee sued the comedian for defamation, seeking monetary and punitive damages, according to court documents. McKee filed the lawsuit at the end of 2015, a year after the article's publication.

U.S. District Court Judge Mark Mastroianni ruled Thursday that McKee had not proven that Cosby had defamed her simply by denying her claims.

"An accused person cannot be foreclosed, during their responsive navigation, from considering the issuance of a simple and unequivocal denial -- free from overall defamatory triggers or contextual themes," he wrote in the decision. "Such a situation would be inconsistent with basic First Amendment principles."

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