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Bruce Lehrmann has failed in his bid to overturn a landmark defamation decision that branded him a rapist, after an appeal court made even more damning findings against him.
In a decision last year, Federal Court Justice Michael Lee found on the balance of probabilities that the former federal Liberal staffer sexually assaulted his then colleague Brittany Higgins in Parliament House in 2019.
On that basis, Lee dismissed Lehrmann’s multimillion-dollar defamation suit against Network Ten and journalist Lisa Wilkinson over an interview with Higgins, aired on Ten’s now-defunct The Project in 2021. He upheld the media parties’ defence of truth to the rape allegation.
On Wednesday, the Full Court of the Federal Court – Justices Michael Wigney, Craig Colvin and Wendy Abraham – dismissed Lehrmann’s appeal against Lee’s decision and ordered him to pay his opponents’ legal costs.
The court went further than Lee and made a significant finding that Lehrmann was not reckless about whether Higgins was consenting to sex, but was aware she did not consent and went ahead anyway.
The “only reasonable inference from the facts as known to Mr Lehrmann at the time, is that at some point before sexual intercourse commenced, Mr Lehrmann … was aware that she was not consenting, but proceeded nonetheless”, the court said in its written decision.
The trio of judges said the circumstances before Lehrmann “screamed loudly to anyone with normal faculties that the very drunk, passive and silent woman … who was his junior colleague at work and who was not in any kind of personal relationship with [him] … had not consented”.
Burrows said outside court that this was “not the end of … [Lehrmann’s] pursuit for justice” and he would be seeking advice about a High Court application for special leave to appeal.
Notwithstanding the costs orders in its favour, Ten is left with a multimillion-dollar legal bill for defending the lawsuit and the appeal. The broadcaster agreed this year to pay $1.15 million to Wilkinson, its former employee, to cover some of the costs of her separate legal team.
Source: Bruce Lehrmann defamation appeal: Lehrmann learns his fate in high-stakes defamation appeal