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Bruce Lehrmann will learn on Wednesday if he has been successful in his bid to overturn a damning defamation decision that branded him a rapist and left him with a multimillion-dollar costs bill.
In a landmark decision last year, Federal Court Justice Michael Lee dismissed the former federal Liberal staffer’s defamation suit against Network Ten and journalist Lisa Wilkinson over an interview with his former colleague Brittany Higgins.
Bruce Lehrmann outside a Queensland court last year.Credit: Dan Peled / The Sydney Morning Herald
Lee found the interview in 2021 on the now defunct The Project program suggested that Lehrmann, who was not named but was identifiable to some viewers, raped Higgins in Parliament House in 2019. However, Lee said that Ten and Wilkinson could rely on the defence of truth.
On Wednesday, the Full Court of the Federal Court – Justices Michael Wigney, Craig Colvin and Wendy Abraham – will deliver its decision in Lehrmann’s appeal. Wigney will read a summary of the court’s reasons.
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Lehrmann’s lawyer, Zali Burrows, had argued in court that Lee had insufficient evidence to find the former federal Liberal staffer was a rapist.
“[Where] the evidence is inadequate, it may simply not be possible to judge the likelihood that something happened reliably enough to reach a rational conclusion one way or the other on the balance of probabilities,” she said in written submissions.
Lee found that Ten and Wilkinson had proven to the civil standard – on the balance of probabilities – that Lehrmann was “hell-bent on having sex” with Higgins, had encouraged her to drink, and did “not care one way or another” whether she consented.
He concluded that Lehrmann had raped Higgins in the early hours of March 23, 2019, in the office of their boss, the then Liberal defence industry minister Linda Reynolds.
In a later decision, Lee ordered Lehrmann to pay $2 million to Ten to cover some of its legal costs of defending his failed lawsuit. The unemployed law student does not have the means to pay that sum.
It leaves Ten with a multimillion-dollar legal bill for defending the lawsuit and the appeal. The broadcaster agreed earlier this year to pay $1.15 million to Wilkinson, its former employee, to cover some of the costs of her separate legal team.
Both Ten and Wilkinson, via their barristers Dr Matt Collins, KC, and Sue Chrysanthou, SC, had submitted that the appeal court could go further than Lee and find Lehrmann knew Higgins did not consent to sex. This was because Lee had found Lehrmann knew Higgins was “very drunk”.
Lehrmann maintained during the defamation trial that he did not have any sexual contact at all with Higgins.
His ACT Supreme Court criminal trial over Higgins’ alleged rape was aborted in 2022 due to juror misconduct. The charges were later dropped owing to concerns about Higgins’ mental health.
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