Seven saga heads to court as deal crumbles

City PR’s Tim Allerton with Seven Network’s commercial director Bruce McWilliam at a February hearing at the NSW Supreme Court. (Renee Nowytarger/The Australian)

Kerry Stokes’s Seven West Media will pursue CEO Tim Worner’s former mistress Amber Harrison in the Supreme Court on Monday, after a mediation of the bitter legal dispute fell over today.

Harrison has stood down her legal team Patron Legal and barrister Julian Burnside. Neither she or any lawyer representing her is expected to appear at the Supreme Court case in Sydney, which had been scheduled to run for five days.

“I have made a realistic assessment of the court case and am choosing not to run it on Monday. I’ve asked my legal team not to represent me,” Harrison said.

Margin Call had revealed that the tortuous settlement negotiations hung in the balance last night.

The two sides had been arguing over the form of words of a public apology from Harrison for more than a month.

It is understood that Harrison had agreed to a private apology to four Seven employees who were named in her explosive Australian Human Rights Commission complaint lodged back when she was represented by Michael Harmer’s scarlet legal shop.

It is understood the form of words of the private apology, as well as a $50,000 payment to Harrison’s lawyers Patron Legal, had been agreed to on the first day of the federal court-ordered mediation, which began on June 1.

But Harrison said the negotiations fell over this morning because of the public statement.

“Negotiations broke down this morning because I refused to put my name to a broad public ‘apology,’ and expression of ‘regret,’” she said on Twitter.

Negotiations broke down this morning because I refused to put my name to a broad public "apology" and expression of "regret"

— Amber Harrison (@_Amber_Harrison) July 7, 2017

The collapse of the mediation — the third between Seven and Harrison — comes seven months after the former Seven executive assistant first went public with her ordeal with the media company in December and almost three years after her relationship with Worner first rocked Seven internally.