The lawsuits of Bruce Lehrmann: an observer’s guide

He is the 28-year-old former federal Liberal staffer who alleges his reputation was torn to shreds when Brittany Higgins publicly accused a then-unnamed former colleague of raping her in Parliament House in 2019.

Bruce Lehrmann was catapulted into the public consciousness from the comfortable obscurity of his former roles in government and at British American Tobacco when he was named in August 2021 as the man accused of raping Higgins, a claim he has consistently denied.

Bruce Lehrmann outside the Federal Court in Sydney in December last year.Credit: Flavio Brancaleone

He has not been employed since June 2021 but has said he is studying law.

Here is a guide to the criminal trial and hydra-headed lawsuits that have transpired since then.

What was Lehrmann accused of?

On February 15, 2021, Higgins appeared in twin interviews on News Corp’s online news site, news.com.au, and on Network Ten’s flagship current affairs program, The Project, to allege she had been raped by a former colleague in Parliament House in March 2019.

Brittany Higgins outside the Federal Court in November last year.Credit: Kate Geraghty

She said her assailant was a colleague and they were both working as advisers at the time to the then Liberal defence industry minister Linda Reynolds. Lehrmann was not named in either interview.

What was the outcome of Lehrmann’s criminal trial involving Higgins?

Six months later, on August 7, 2021, Lehrmann was publicly identified as the man accused of raping Higgins when he was charged with one count of sexual assault.

His ACT Supreme Court criminal trial for Higgins’ sexual assault started on October 4, 2022. Lehrmann maintains his innocence and exercised his right to silence at the trial. As is common in sexual assault trials, Higgins was the key prosecution witness.

Bruce Lehrmann (second left) departs the ACT Supreme Court in Canberra on October 25, 2022.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The trial ran for 12 days and the jury deliberated for five days. But on October 27 the trial was aborted after it emerged a juror had brought a research paper into the jury room.

“The subject matter of the paper is … sexual assault,” Chief Justice Lucy McCallum said in a judgment at the time.

“Specifically, it is a discussion of the unhelpfulness of attempting to quantify the prevalence of false complaints of sexual assault and a deeper, research-based analysis of the reasons for both false complaints and scepticism in the face of true complaints.”

McCallum said the “unfairness to both parties is manifest”.

“During the course of the trial, on my calculation, the jury must have been given at least 17, and possibly more, warnings or directions as to the prohibition on undertaking any research or inquiries of their own,” she said. The trial was aborted owing to juror misconduct.

Why is Lehrmann suing Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson?

The ACT Director of Public Prosecutions announced in December 2022 that Lehrmann would not stand trial for a second time owing to concerns about Higgins’ mental health.

Two months later, on February 7, 2023, Lehrmann launched Federal Court defamation proceedings against Ten and Lisa Wilkinson, a former co-host of The Project who helmed the network’s interview with Higgins. He accused the network and its former star presenter of defaming him by alleging he was guilty of sexually assaulting Higgins.

Lisa Wilkinson arriving at the Federal Court in December last year with her barrister, Sue Chrysanthou, SC.Credit: Steven Siewert

The Federal Court trial spanned a month and had concluded in December last year, before Ten was allowed to reopen its case on Tuesday to call fresh evidence from a former Seven producer about that network’s alleged dealings with Lehrmann before he inked an exclusive interview deal with its Spotlight program last year. Justice Michael Lee will hear that evidence on Thursday.

He has delayed the delivery of his judgment to consider this evidence and has yet to set a new date to hand down his decision.

A threshold issue in the case is whether The Project identified Lehrmann even though he wasn’t named. If the court finds he was identified, it will consider the media parties’ defences of truth and qualified privilege.

Why did Lehrmann sue News Corp and the ABC?

The lawsuit against Ten and Wilkinson is not the only legal action brought by Lehrmann. In 2023, he also launched, and settled, Federal Court defamation cases against News Corp and the ABC.

He accused News Corp’s news.com.au and its political editor Samantha Maiden of defaming him by running an interview with Higgins on February 15, 2021, the same day as The Project interview. He was not named in that interview.

He settled those proceedings in May. The story remains online with the addition of an editor’s note stating that “News.com.au notes that a criminal charge of sexual assault was brought against Mr Lehrmann and later dropped. News.com.au does not suggest that he was guilty of that charge.”

No damages were paid, but News Corp said it made a “contribution to his legal costs”. The figure was later revealed to be $295,000.

His case against the ABC related to its broadcast of a National Press Club address in 2022 by Grace Tame and Higgins. That case was also settled on the eve of what would have been a joint trial with the Ten parties starting in November last year.

The broadcaster paid $150,000 under a deed of settlement, which included $143,000 as a contribution to Lehrmann’s legal costs.

Lehrmann alleged in all three lawsuits that the media outlets defamed him by suggesting he was guilty of rape.

What was the Sofronoff inquiry?

In December 2022, the ACT government announced a board of inquiry into the conduct of criminal justice agencies involved in the Lehrmann prosecution. The inquiry was headed by former Queensland judge Walter Sofronoff, KC.

Journalist Janet Albrechtsen and Walter Sofronoff, KC.Credit: Edwina Pickles, Robert Shakespeare

Ultimately, Sofronoff found the prosecution was properly brought, but he made a range of damaging findings against the then ACT director of prosecutions, Shane Drumgold, SC.

In another twist, Drumgold then launched proceedings in the ACT Supreme Court effectively challenging those findings.

Drumgold argued successfully that Sofronoff’s communications during the inquiry with Janet Albrechtsen, a columnist at News Corp’s The Australian, gave rise to a reasonable apprehension of bias on Sofronoff’s part. This is not a finding of actual bias but of the appearance of it.

Albrechtsen was consistently critical of Drumgold in her articles, the court heard, and acting Justice Stephen Kaye said “a fair-minded lay observer” might reasonably have “apprehended that Mr Sofronoff … might have been influenced by the views, held and publicly expressed by Ms Albrechtsen, concerning the conduct by the plaintiff of the prosecution of the criminal proceedings against Mr Lehrmann”.

Who is Taylor Auerbach and why might he sue Lehrmann for defamation?

In another surprise development, Taylor Auerbach, a former producer on Seven’s Spotlight program, sent a defamation concerns notice to Lehrmann on March 27 this year. Auerbach worked on the network’s exclusive interview with the former Liberal staffer that aired last year.

Former Seven and Sky News producer Taylor Auerbach.Credit: James Brickwood

A concerns notice must be sent before defamation proceedings are launched, and it gives the person facing the threat of proceedings an opportunity to rectify the situation.

Last month, news.com.au’s Maiden reported that “two Thai masseuses were booked – one for Mr Lehrmann and another for a Seven employee” in the early hours of Saturday, November 26, 2022. Auerbach was later named in media reports as the Seven employee.

At the time, Seven was trying to secure the interview with Lehrmann after his criminal trial collapsed.

Lehrmann issued a statement in response to Maiden’s story, denying using the services of the women.

“It’s an untrue and bizarre story from a disgruntled ex-Network Seven producer,” Lehrmann told News Corp. “Network Seven [has] only ever covered reasonable travel for filming and accommodation.”

Auerbach’s solicitor Rebekah Giles said in the concerns notice: “We are instructed these comments are false.”

She said that Lehrmann’s press statement conveyed a defamatory imputation that “Taylor Auerbach lied to the press about Bruce Lehrmann being bought a massage by a Seven Network employee”.

Auerbach has now emerged as a central figure in Ten’s defence to Lehrmann’s defamation case after the network won an eleventh-hour bid to call him to give evidence in court, less than 48 hours before the judge was expected to deliver his decision in the high-stakes fight.

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