Bruce Lehrmann on April 15 after losing his Federal Court defamation suit.Credit:Wolter Peeters
Lehrmann’s solicitor,Paul Svilans,told the Federal Court in Sydney on Wednesday that there was no agreement by a third party to pay Lehrmann’s costs,but there was a costs agreement between his firm,Mark O’Brien Legal,and the former staffer. That agreement was produced to the court.
“It was a conditional costs agreement whereby there’s no obligation to pay the amount of costs in the event the proceedings were unsuccessful,” Federal Court Justice Michael Lee said of that document. This is sometimes referred to as a no-win,no-fee agreement.
The judge said that “it appears from those documents … that there is no agreement by a third party to pay the costs” of the litigation.
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“The two key points are,yes,there’s been a lot of costs rendered,but they’re not recoverable because Mr Lehrmann … lost,” Lee said,adding that there was “no third-party agreement to pay costs”.
Lehrmann has until May 31 to file any notice of appeal againstLee’s decision on April 15 to dismiss his lawsuit over an interview with Brittany Higgins,broadcast on Ten’s The Project on February 15,2021,and helmed by Wilkinson. He had claimed the report defamed him by suggesting he was guilty of sexual assault.
Lee found Ten and Wilkinson had proven to the civil standard – on the balance of probabilities – thatLehrmann had raped Higgins in Parliament House in March 2019 when they were working as staffers to Liberal senator Linda Reynolds,who was then the defence industry minister. This is lower than the criminal standard of beyond reasonable doubt.