- Bruce Lehrmann to receive a huge legal bill after defamation loss
- If he’s unable to pay it, Network Ten will have to pay its own lawyers
Network Ten may have to fork out millions to cover its own legal bills for Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation case if the former staffer can’t pay.
Lehrmann lost the case against the network and Lisa Wilkinson in the Federal Court in April, which he himself launched in a bid to restore his reputation after Brittany Higgins accused him of rape on The Project in 2021.
Justice Michael Lee found, on a balance of probabilities, that Lehrmann had raped Brittany Higgins in Parliament House in 2019 in much the way she described during her television interview with Wilkinson.
On Friday, the judge ordered that Lehrmann foot the winning parties’ legal costs, which are rumoured to be worth about $6million.
If Lehrmann is unable to cover the costs, the network could be forced to pay its own bills.
Bruce Lehrmann is pictured outside court after losing his defamation case against Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson
Lehrmann was also ordered to pay Wilkinson’s legal fees, which were worth $700,000 in mid-2023 but are rumoured to have hit about $2million after the month-long trial in December.
If Lehrmann cannot pay Wilkinson’s bill, Network Ten will have to pay a portion of her fees which were ‘properly incurred and reasonable in amount’.
During a costs hearing earlier in May, Ten’s barrister Matthew Collins KC said discussions about the costs were ‘academic’ because it was unlikely Lehrmann was worth millions of dollars.
He said ‘someone’ would have to bankrupt Lehrmann to recoup any of the costs.
Dr Collins said in court: ‘Alternatively, someone has to go and bankrupt Mr Lehrmann.’
The network had ordered Lehrmann to produce bank statements, contracts or agreements with third parties to cover the costs of the trial if he lost.
However, his solicitor Paul Svilans told the court last week that Lehrmann had nothing to produce.
The only agreement Lehrmann had was a no-win, no-fee arrangement with Mr Svilans’ firm, Mark O’Brien Legal, which meant he had no obligation to pay his lawyers if he lost.
During his judgement on Friday, Justice Lee said there were ‘no real winners’ in the defamation trial.
Lisa Wilkinson is pictured (right) with her barrister, Sue Chrysanthou SC, after the defamation trial judgement in April
He accepted Ten’s submission that Lehrmann proceeded with the defamation case knowing Brittany Higgins’ rape claims were substantially true.
He said Lehrmann ‘defended the criminal charge on a false basis, lied to police, and then allowed that lie to go uncorrected before the jury’.
‘He wrongly instructed his senior counsel to cross-examine a complainant of sexual assault in two legal proceedings including, relevantly for present purposes, in this case, on a knowingly false premise.’
Network Ten and Wilkinson were asked to submit their estimated legal bills by May 24, before a case management hearing on May 27.
