CONTENT WARNING: This article discusses rape.
Loser Bruce Lehrmann has been hit by one of the first costs of his spectacular failure of a lawsuit against Network 10 and Lisa Wilkinson. On Friday the (formerly alleged) rapist agreed to pay thousands of dollars to Wilkinson’s husband, journalist Peter FitzSimons, to cover the cost of him producing documents to the court for Lehrmann’s defamation case.
After plenty of speculation about how much money Lehrmann will be ordered to pay for the five-week-long defamation case, with some estimates as high as $10 million, the first official Federal Court order has been made and agreed to by Lehrmann.
The court demanded the applicant pay FitzSimons for the “reasonable loss incurred in complying with the subpoena addressed to him.” This is in relation to the fact that before the trial, Lehrmann’s legal team ordered FitzSimons to provide the court with copies of Brittany Higgins‘ unpublished book as evidence.
Higgins famously landed a $325K book deal with Penguin Random House publishing, with FitzSimons brokering the deal between the various parties. An unpublished draft of this book was released by the Federal Court during the high-profile defamation case, which resulted in losses to FitzSimons.
This is why today Lehrmann was ordered to pay the journalist back $4,616, as was requested by FitzSimons in March.
Negotiations will continue as to what the rest of the costs Lehrmann will have to pay to Network 10 and Wilkinson for losing the defamation case.
Last November, the former Liberal staffer sued the television network for defamation over a segment on The Project in which Wilkinson interviewed Higgins about being raped in Parliament House by a fellow staffer in 2019. Though Bruce Lehrmann was not named in the broadcast, he sued the network for defamation, claiming the rape never happened.
On April 15, Justice Michael Lee decided that on the balance of probabilities, Lehrmann did rape Higgins in 2019 and that The Project had aired the truth and therefore not defamed Lehrmann.
Lee scolded Lehrmann for his choice to bring on a defamation case after the criminal case for the rape was abandoned, and made the famous quip: “Having escaped the lions’ den, Mr Lehrmann made the mistake of going back for his hat.”
