SYDNEY: Alleged rapist Bruce Lehrmann has sensationally won his Federal Court defamation case here against the Ten Network and its presenter Lisa Wilkinson, with the presiding judge ruling Lehrmann had indeed been defamed and awarding the former Liberal staffer “entirely appropriate” damages.
The case had been expected to continue tomorrow, with Lehrmann’s legal team continuing to press their case that their client, while not being named in a Network Ten interview Wilkinson conducted with Brittany Higgins, was clearly the Liberal staffer Higgins claimed had raped her in Parliament House in the early hours of 23 March, 2019.
The Bug understands that Mr Justice Lee’s associate late yesterday afternoon tried to contact as many of Lehrmann’s barristers as he could to advise that the judge had reached certain conclusions during the weekend recess and wished that those be brought to the attention of all parties involved “in the hope of us all avoiding next week’s sittings, particularly the complainant”.
These included the judge’s view that the nation’s defamation laws were so weighed in a complainant’s favour that Lehrmann had on the balance of probabilities been defamed “seeing no-one’s probably ever going to be really sure what happened that night” and therefore deserves monetary compensation.
But in view of Lehrmann’s performance in the witness box so far, that amount should be one cent, an “entirely appropriate amount” to match any possible further damage done to Lehrmann’s integrity, honesty and standing in the community from his decision to proceed with this defamation action.
The judge has also ruled that all parties pay their own costs, with the added warning however from his associate that if both sides didn’t agree to bringing this case to a swift end this way and his justice had to put up with possibly another two or three days of “having to listen to Lehrmann’s bullshit” as he is again torn to shreds by the resumed questioning of the Ten Network’s silk Dr Matt Collins and then Wilkinson’s counsel, then the one-cent ruling would be replaced with a rotten peppercorn and Lehrmann would be ordered to pay everyone’s costs.
Lehrmann was later found celebrating his win in a Sydney CBD nightclub (above), buying himself bottles of expensive champagne using a number of credit cards.
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