Judgment day in the Lehrmann case is here – so let’s back in the judge
When Justice Michael Lee delivers his verdict in the defamation case it should spell the end of the saga – but will the dreaded Lehrmann-Higgins curse claim another victim?
Judgment day is upon us.
At 10.15am on Monday, Justice Michael Lee will deliver his verdict in a case that has absorbed more time, money and emotional energy from its central figures than any of them could have imagined.
In the process it has fractured the country along faultlines that sometimes look familiar.
That’s because we’ve been here before.
It was less than a year ago that a judge handed down his decision in another de facto criminal trial dressed up as a defamation case.
Justice Anthony Besanko ruled in the Federal Court that Ben Roberts-Smith had, on the balance of probabilities, committed war crimes in Afghanistan. The Full Court has yet to deliver its decision on an appeal.
But the ink was barely dry on the original judgment before the SAS soldier’s backers around the nation began to cry foul.
It was all a stitch up. The verdict was a disgrace. The judge had ignored the evidence.
Can we all agree, in advance, to accept the umpire’s decision, this time around?
Like Besanko, Lee is the kind of judge you’d all want if you were falsely accused of a crime you didn’t commit.
And the kind you’d want if you were a genuine victim of a crime falsely denied by the perpetrator.
But Lee will need the wisdom of Solomon for this one.
The 58-year-old has been rightly lauded in recent days for his calming influence in a case that could easily have descended into acrimony, using a blend of intelligence, humanity and humour.
But his judgment is going to rub a lot of people up the wrong way. It’s possible Lee will find outright that Bruce Lehrmann raped Brittany Higgins on the balance of probabilities, or that he did not.
Both findings are fraught.
On the evidence produced in the case, both Lehrmann and Higgins have not been truthful at various points along the way.
Lehrmann’s multiple explanations for why he ended up at Parliament House that night with Higgins have stretched credulity. Higgins’ actions after the alleged assault – from the dubious photo of her bruised leg to her attempts to spin the story as a Liberal Party cover-up – have raised doubts about her story.
Lee was clearly unimpressed with the evidence of both as various points in their testimony.
That leaves it more likely that Ten’s journalism – and that of its once-star reporter Lisa Wilkinson – will come under scrutiny.
Ten did itself no favours by refusing to pay for Wilkinson to have her own lawyers in the case. Her cross claim against the network not only proved she desperately needed independent counsel, it allowed into evidence documents that showed Ten’s lawyers approved her Logies speech. Worse, Ten had initially used the veneer of legal privilege to prevent the public – and Lee himself – knowing the truth.
The Lehrmann-Higgins saga has seemed to carry a curse, even before salacious allegations in recent weeks by renegade Seven producer Taylor Auerbach blew up his own career and those of his two former friends and Spotlight colleagues, Steve Jackson and Mark Llewellyn.
The juggernaut has chewed up and spat out former defence minister Linda Reynolds, her then chief of staff Fiona Brown, former ACT prosecutor Shane Drumgold, board of inquiry chair Walter Sofronoff KC and a string of lesser known victims, among them the many police investigators who simply did their job and were vilified for it.
Will Lee become the next target when his judgment fails to satisfy the baying mob?
Tens of thousands will watch the verdict unfold on the Federal Court’s YouTube channel on Monday morning as Lee delivers his judgment.
For better or worse, it has fallen to one man to be the arbiter of truth and fairness in a drama that should have ended years ago. Let’s back him in on it. And move on.
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