Former Liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann has been ordered to pay $2 million in costs to Network Ten and journalist after his failed defamation claim against the broadcaster.
In April, the Federal Court found against Lehrmann in his claim. Lehrmann has now been ordered to pay the costs for Ten and journalist Lisa Wilkinson.
While Ten’s barrister, Zoe Graus, told the court on Thursday morning that the broadcaster’s estimated legal costs were in excess of $3 million, on the suggestion of Justice Lee the network sought a lump sum order totalling $2 million in order to avoid the expense and time of a costs assessment.
Wilkinson, who had a simultaneous claim against Network Ten seeking for the broadcaster to pay for her (separate) legal representation, has had an offer from the broadcaster of $558,548.30, less than a third of the $1.8 million she was originally seeking from her former employer.
In any case, the full extent of the costs in the case are unlikely to be settled. The court heard Lehrmann is a man of “modest means”, and in May heard that Lehrmann had a no-win, no-fee arrangement with his lawyers.
Lehrmann has been unemployed since June 2021 and is currently studying law at the University of Notre Dame. He has an appeal against the trial judgement, although in a separate action, Ten has filed for the appeal to be dismissed if Lehrmann cannot produce $200,000 in security.
Lehrmann’s defamation case came after his former colleague, ex-Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins, gave an interview to Wilkinson on Ten’s The Project in 2021, alleging she had been raped in Parliament House in 2019. Lehrmann, who has always denied raping Higgins, was not named, but claimed he was identifiable from the story.
Lehrmann had originally also filed defamation lawsuits against the ABC and News Corp. He settled ahead of the trial with News Corp, which published an interview on news.com.au between Higgins and political editor Samantha Maiden the day of the Project broadcast, as well as with the ABC, which aired a later address to the National Press Club by Higgins in which she repeated her claims.
