The Bruce Lehrmann defamation verdict is in, but Brittany Higgins and Linda Reynolds are still fighting

Brittany Higgins and Linda Reynolds will face off in WA’s Supreme Court. (Supplied/Department of Defence)

While all eyes have been on the explosive failed defamation case brought by Bruce Lehrmann against Channel 10 and journalist Lisa Wilkinson, another legal drama has been playing out in Western Australia’s Supreme Court.

Senator Linda Reynolds is suing her former political staffer Brittany Higgins and Ms Higgins’s partner David Sharaz for defamation over a series of social media posts she argues caused her loss and damage.

It was Senator Reynolds’s couch in her Canberra parliamentary suite on which Bruce Lehrmann was found to have raped Ms Higgins, according to the judge who presided over his civil defamation case.

Senator Reynolds said Ms Higgins’s posts were a breach of an employment settlement contract, which she submitted contained a “non-disparagement” clause.

She is seeking an order to prevent Ms Higgins and Mr Sharaz from publishing defamatory material about her and any further alleged breaches of the settlement contract.

Where are things at?

The Lehrmann civil action has loomed large over Senator Reynolds’s WA defamation action.

At one point it looked like the WA proceedings would be delayed until Justice Lee delivered his findings.

This didn’t eventuate and WA Supreme Court Justice Marcus Solomon ordered both parties to sit down face-to-face to try to settle the case in mediation in March — a bid that ultimately failed.

Ms Higgins and Mr Sharaz even flew from France to Perth to attend the hearings in person.

Fast forward to last week, when Federal Court Justice Michael Lee found, on the balance of probabilities, Mr Lehrmann raped Ms Higgins in Senator Reynolds’s parliamentary office in Canberra in the early hours of March 23, 2019.

A separate criminal charge of rape had been brought against Mr Lehrmann, which would have required the far-higher standard of proof of beyond reasonable doubt.

However, that trial was abandoned in late 2022 due to juror misconduct, with no adverse findings against him.

Mr Lehrmann has always denied raping Ms Higgins.

‘I hope we can resolve our differences’

Senator Reynolds and Ms Higgins have both issued statements in the wake of Justice Lee’s decision.

Publishing on her social media accounts, Ms Higgins conceded Senator Reynolds and her chief of staff, Fiona Brown, had been “hurt” in the aftermath of Mr Lehrmann allegedly raping her and “for that I am sorry”.

“My perceptions and feelings about what happened in the days and weeks after my rape are different from theirs,” she wrote.

“I deeply regret we have not yet found common ground.

“I hope we can resolve our differences with a better understanding of each other’s experience.”

However, Senator Reynolds has said she will not drop her defamation case unless Ms Higgins accepts Justice Lee’s findings on claims of a political cover-up.

In a statement, she said she appreciated the apology and hoped the findings would give Ms Higgins peace, but that her defamation case was never about the allegation of rape.

“My action deals with what Justice Lee exposed as false allegations raised two years after the rape, allegations that I and my staff, specifically Fiona Brown, not only failed to support Ms Higgins but subjected her to a dreadful and damaging political cover-up,” she said.

What did Justice Lee find about ‘the cover-up allegation’?

Mr Lehrmann’s defamation case centred on an interview with Ms Higgins by journalist Lisa Wilkinson, aired on Channel 10’s The Project in 2021.

While Justice Lee found the respondents, Channel 10 and Ms Wilkinson, had legally justified their report that Mr Lehrmann raped Ms Higgins, this was a “minor theme” in their broadcast.

“The allegation of cover-up was the major motif,” he wrote.

“The publication of accusations of corrupt conduct in putting up roadblocks and forcing a rape victim to choose between her career and justice won [Channel 10’s] The Project team … a glittering prize,” Justice Lee wrote.

“But when the accusation is examined properly, it was supposition without reasonable foundation in verifiable fact.”

Justice Lee found it was evident several things being alleged were untrue, in relation to how Senator Reynolds and her chief of staff Ms Brown reacted following the allegation of rape being raised.

These included:

• That Ms Higgins told Ms Brown that Mr Lehrman had sexually assaulted her, just three days after it allegedly occurred on March 23.
• That “Ms Brown made it clear … that [Ms Higgins] ought remain silent about the sexual assault, in order to keep her job/career”.
• That Ms Brown demonstrated an unwillingness to discuss sick leave for Ms Higgins’s mental health and time off to participate in an AFP investigation.
• That Ms Higgins was forced to choose between taking time off for her health or going to work on the election campaign in Western Australia with Senator Reynolds.
• That in going to WA, Ms Higgins felt she had no choice but to abandon pursuit of her sexual assault complaint with the AFP. 
• That Senator Reynolds did not engage with Ms Higgins at all during the WA trip and avoided her.

His judgement noted one of the most “topsy-turvy” aspects of the case was the picture that emerged of a meeting between Ms Higgins, Ms Brown and Senator Reynolds on April 1, after which she first went to the AFP.

Ms Higgins described that meeting as “adversarial” and suggested that Senator Reynolds said “these are things that women go through”, “evidently meant to convey the impression, as Network Ten submits, that the minister “made her feel like she was trying to minimise what had occurred”, Justice Lee wrote.

But Justice Lee found “no minimisation of Ms Higgins’s experience was attempted and, to the contrary, attempts were made to support and reassure Ms Higgins and, in particular, to encourage her to report her account to the AFP”.

When will we next hear from Ms Higgins?

Senator Reynolds says in the wake of the incident, she and Ms Brown had endured three years of intense public scrutiny, vilification and “vile trolling” and been “demonised as the villain in a story of a political cover-up I have always known to be untrue”.

“Fiona Brown and I have lost our careers, had our reputations destroyed and have had our health seriously and irreparably compromised,” she said.

Ms Higgins, in her statement, said she did not agree with all of Justice Lee’s findings.

“For decades, women working in Parliament House have not been heard,” she wrote.

“There was no safe space for them to speak up or raise serious complaints.

“I felt compelled to tell my story.”

Both parties will convene in the WA Supreme Court on May 24 for a strategic conference, which may be the first time we hear whether the Lee decision will impact the case going forward.

The trial is set down for six weeks of hearings, starting in late July.