Bruce Lehrmann is seeking to recover previously paid legal costs in order to fund new counsel in his bid to overturn sexual assault findings made against him.
Mr Lehrmann's appeal case against Justice Michael Lee's damning findings returned to the Federal Court on Friday morning for a case management hearing organised at the last minute.
Earlier this year, Justice Lee found, on the civil balance of probabilities, Mr Lehrmann raped former Liberal staffer colleague Brittany Higgins inside a Parliament House ministerial office.
Mr Lehrmann's bid to overturn the April judgment has been far from smooth sailing, with the court hearing on Friday the man was now in default of previously made orders relating to filing evidence and an amended notice of appeal.
"You're in breach of orders for which I have no explanation," Justice Wendy Abraham, who is presiding over appeal proceedings, said.
After being granted a time extension to file his initial notice of appeal, which sets out grounds for his bid, Mr Lehrmann did so under his own name and was expected to be self-represented.
Solicitors and barristers took on his defamation case against Network Ten and journalist Lisa Wilkinson, and acted in last year's month-long civil trial, on a no-win-no-fee basis.
But his new solicitor, Zali Burrows, did not file an updated notice of appeal in the time granted by the court.
It now appears Mr Lehrmann and his latest legal team are looking to recover about $117,000, acquired through previous defamation settlements with the ABC and News Corp and disbursed towards Ten's legal costs from a trust account.
"Which we say were not payable on construction of the conditional costs agreement and there were a lot of monies paid in respect of hearing allocation fees, filing fees, to which my client didn't have to pay at the time because he was on Centrelink," Ms Burrows said.
"We need that money because I propose to brief Guy Reynolds [SC], who provided the advice in the matter and for him to settle the amended appeal which has been drafted."
The court heard Mr Lehrmann's former lawyers were "not entitled" to make use of the money.
While Ms Burrows sought for the judge to deal with the issue, Justice Abraham made very clear it was not her problem.
"What's this got to do with me?" the judge asked, noting no application had been filed over an issue relating to separate proceedings. She ultimately made no orders.
Ms Burrows is now set to take the application to deal with the construction of the costs agreement in question to a registrar.
Justice Abraham gave Mr Lehrmann until September 13 to file and serve an amended notice of appeal.
Among his original appeal grounds, Mr Lehrmann argued a "denial of procedural fairness", Justice Lee did not properly take into account Ms Higgins' credibility issues, and a theoretical entitlement of $20,000 was inadequate.
A one-day hearing is still set for October, when Mr Lehrmann will seek to stay the enforcement of a $2 million costs order made by Justice Lee, and Ten will seek that he put down $200,000 as security costs before his appeal proceedings can go ahead at all.
"If there is any risk that the timetable will not be met the matter should be brought on before that's going to happen, as opposed to waiting for the breach to occur," Justice Abraham said.
The civil findings made against Mr Lehrmann earlier this year do not amount to a criminal conviction. He has always denied sexually assaulting Ms Higgins.
His ACT criminal trial was aborted in 2022 due to juror misconduct and the charge of sexual intercourse without consent later dropped.
