Bruce Lehrmann, the walking personification of ‘ick,’ has continued wasting the time of Australia’s legal professionals, to the extent that lawyers from his historic failure of a defamation case are now assuming that there’ll be “no recovery” from the lawsuit.
Alrighty folks, you’ve clicked on this article, so you know the deal: it’s backstory time (because if we don’t, Bruce might sue us).
Brittany Higgins alleged that Lehrmann raped her in Parliament House in 2019. He said he didn’t, and his criminal trial was discontinued after juror misconduct.
Lehrmann then took Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson, who reported on the allegations, to court for defamation. They argued a truth defence, and Justice Michael Lee decided on the balance of probabilities that Lehrmann raped Higgins and therefore the truth defence was successful. Lehrmann’s lawsuit was dismissed, and now he’s broke AF and being chased for millions.
In the months following Lee’s judgement, Lehrmann has lodged an appeal of the decision, and has continued to dispute to the Federal Court that he should have to pay Network Ten the $2 million in recovery from his case before his appeal. The appeal hearing is yet to take place.
As a means of financial protection the network applied for a security of costs order of $200,000, which its lawyers are demanding Lehrmann pay before continuing his appeal.
The thing is, if that $200K order gets enforced and Lehrmann has to pay it out, he could have to declare bankruptcy, which is why the court heard today that Lehrmann was served with a bankruptcy notice in July.
“Mr Lehrmann has no capacity to pay his existing liabilities, let alone any costs that might be incurred in the appeal,” said Network Ten’s lawyer, Dr Matthew Collins.
“And that’s a matter which is in our favour of granting the application for security of costs.”
However Lehrmann’s lawyer, Zali Burrows, denied he ever received such a notice, and claimed that instead an attempt was made to serve the notice to his mother.
This whole saga of Lehrmann being chased for money has now gotten so bad, that the lawyers for Network Ten and Wilkinson who won the case admitted nobody involved currently believes they’ll be compensated for the lawsuit, if his appeal fails or is discontinued.
“We, frankly, are proceeding on the basis that there’ll never be any recovery, but that’s just an assumption on our partners,” Collins told the court.
The infamous defamation case ended in April of this year, with Justice Lee roasting Lehrmann for his audacity to re-enter the “Lion’s Den” by initiating the trial.
And as the Federal Court heard today in the dispute, Dr Collins believes Bruce Lehrmann has been given more than enough time in the spotlight.
“He’s had his day in court, he had a very expensive trial which was conducted in the full glare of the entire nation,” Dr Collins said.
“He was very ably represented and his honour had made findings at the end of the day.”
Ironically, Bruce Lehrmann was not present during the proceedings.
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