CANBERRA: Bruce Lehrmann’s lead barrister Steve Whybrow has strongly defended his summing-up tactics before Mr Justice Michael Lee in Lehrman’s defamation case against the Ten Network and journalist Lisa Wilkinson.

Justice Lee in the Federal Court in Sydney on Monday threw out Lehrmann’s defamation case and called him a liar, a cad, a rapist and a circus lion tamer, among other things. Costs are expected to be awarded against Lehrmann and his legal team.

Widely regarded as this nation’s finest defamation lawyer, Mr Whybrow SC (pictured in a Manuka supermarket early this morning where we put questions to him) told Justice Lee in his summing up in the lengthy case that the jurist might indeed conclude that sex did in fact take place in Linda Reynolds’ ministerial suite back in 2019 but if it did, it would have been consensual.

But as Mr Whybrow explained to this organ in the packets-of-nibblies aisle of the supermarket, he had urged Mr Justice Lee that even that conclusion should not prevent him from finding for Mr Lehrmann and that he was indeed defamed by the Ten Network and Wilkinson. And in fact the judge ruled just that.

The Bug asked him: “Would you say you did your very best despite losing the case? and he replied: “Yes”.

The Bug‘s permanently retained top-tier defamation lawyer, who asked not be be identified as part of his parole conditions, defended Mr Whybrow’s tactics.

“Mr Whyburn (sic) had a duty, as any competent barrister would have to a client, to cover every possible base that the judge might consider in reaching his conclusions.

“He might have simply misjudged just how base Lehrmann himself could be and that the judge might really apply himself to considering that possibility.

“And in applying that broad strategy Mr Eyebrow (sic) had to discard the fact that Lehrmann had repeatedly stated that when they entered Reynolds’ office, they went into different rooms and never saw each other again that night.”

Our inhouse lawyer added: “But it’s a tactic that could easily have worked for Mr Eyeburn (sic). I mean, she’s a lovely looking girl and you couldn’t have blamed Lehrmann for giving her one even if he has always sworn black and blue that he didn’t.”

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