Lehrmann to pay Peter FitzSimons’ costs over Higgins’ $325,000 book deal

Bruce Lehrmann will pay author and columnist Peter FitzSimons to cover his costs in the failed defamation action against Ten and FitzSimons’s wife, Lisa Wilkinson.

Ten’s Lisa Wilkinson and husband Peter FitzSimons. Source: Instagram

Bruce Lehrmann will pay author and Sydney Morning Herald columnist Peter FitzSimons $4616 to cover his “reasonable loss or expense” in responding to the former Liberal staffer’s failed defamation action against Ten and FitzSimons’s wife, Lisa Wilkinson.

The orders for payment by the Federal Court on Friday ­relate to subpoenas issued to FitzSimons last June to produce documents relating to the $325,000 book deal he helped Brittany Higgins negotiate with publisher Penguin Random House.

During the aborted rape trial of Mr Lehrmann in 2022, it emerged that FitzSimons had negotiated the advance for Ms Higgins’ book, with industry sources suggesting Penguin Random House hoped to sell at least 100,000 copies at $29.99 each.

Ms Higgins, during Mr Lehrmann’s criminal trial, said she was approached by FitzSimons and Wilkinson at an event where FitzSimons offered to act as her agent.

Ms Higgins said “within a day” FitzSimons told her he had an offer for $325,000 for a book outlining her experiences.

“I just felt I needed to document my experience,” she said.

Ms Higgins agreed she had outlined the chapters before she gave a formal interview to police.

The book has not been published but chapters of the draft memoir released online by the Federal Court earlier this month detail a “post-question time ritual of breaking out a bottle of wine/champagne for the office” and of Higgins serving drinks to “The Big Swinging Dicks” – ­former ministers Steven Ciobo, Christian Porter and Michael ­Keenan.

She also refers to a Wolf of Wall Street-style party held in the office of Mr Ciobo, claiming he was “lining up his staff and pouring whiskey directly in our mouths”.

Brittany Higgins outside court in Perth.

In a chapter titled Game Planning for the PM Meeting, Ms Higgins details how she “pounced” on partner David Sharaz after devising a plan to “war-game” a discussion with then Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

According to the court documents, Ms Higgins wrote that she and Mr Sharaz had “become quite a twosome when it came to game planning”, considering her experience as a media adviser, and his as a producer.

The allegations contained in the book outline have never been tested in court and there is no independent verification of the claims made by Ms Higgins concerning the named MPs.

Wilkinson may end up footing a large chunk of her large legal bill in the defamation case after the Ten Network told Justice Lee this week she should be liable for any “duplicative or wasteful” work by her expensive legal team.

After a successful cross-claim by Wilkinson, Ten earlier this year agreed to pay “reasonable” costs for her team, led by top defamation silk Sue Chrysanthou SC. In October, those legal costs had already exceeded $700,000 and have since ballooned to estimated $2m.

But Ten says if the unemployed Mr Lehrmann can’t pay the expected costs of the action, which could top $10m, then Wilkinson should be required to pay her share for all aspects of the case where it wasn’t necessary for her to have separate representation.

Wilkinson, in turn, has accused her employer of “impermissibly seeking to reagitate” the claim she won against the network ­earlier this year.

The parties return to court on 1 May for a further hearing on costs.