Two words from Brittany Higgins could have stopped this $2m mess
Brittany Higgins could have spared herself and Linda Reynolds the anguish and huge cost of a defamation action if she’d accepted a simple request from the former Liberal minister.
Brittany Higgins could have spared herself and Linda Reynolds the immense stress and cost of a defamation action with two words: I’m sorry.
Higgins’ false allegation that the former Liberal minister was involved in the cover-up of her rape could not have been more wounding.
Nothing stings like an attack on your integrity, but for Reynolds the accusation that she had walked past another woman’s rape was intolerable.
The slur against Reynolds and her then chief of staff Fiona Brown was all the more devastating because it was made by a young woman they had tried only to help.
For their trouble, they were publicly crucified.
There’s no doubt Higgins was left traumatised by her rape. Judge Michael Lee found in the Federal Court last year that Bruce Lehrmann had been so hellbent on having sex with his young co-worker that he was indifferent to whether or not she had consented.
But having been vindicated by Lee’s finding that she was sexually assaulted, Higgins refused to acknowledge his finding that her accusations against Reynolds and Brown were utterly false.
She could have accepted Reynolds’ simple request for an apology.
Instead, Higgins doubled down with offensive social media posts, amplifying claims that had already destroyed Reynolds’ career and mental health.
But the senator decided she wasn’t going to let Higgins take her reputation, too.
She sued, mortgaging her house to pay her legal bills.
In the Supreme Court of Western Australia on Wednesday, judge Paul Tottle found in Reynolds’ favour on almost every count.
Like Lee before him, Tottle demolished Higgins’ claim that her rape had been hushed up to avoid a political scandal in the lead-up to a federal election.
Tottle said he was unable to find that Higgins and her partner David Sharaz had engaged in a “conspiracy” because their plan did not have the sole purpose of injuring Reynolds.
But on the central question Tottle was abundantly clear: not only was there no cover-up but Higgins had been dishonest in alleging it.
Her determination to lend credibility to the allegation “demonstrated such an indifference to the truth that her account of the essential elements of the allegation can only be regarded as dishonest”.
Higgins had “weaponised her story and a vital part of the story was the false allegation (Reynolds) had covered up the rape allegation”.
Tottle accepted Reynolds’ “sense of frustration, anger and helplessness in the face of a continuation of the attacks on her”.
Now Higgins faces a $340,000 damages and interest award and a massive bill for her own and Reynolds’ legal costs that could easily approach $2m.
She and Sharaz have already had to sell their house in France to fund her defence.
Now she will have to cut deep into the $2.4m she was awarded in her compensation claim against the commonwealth – if she hasn’t been able to shelter the money behind the trust structure created to protect it.
Lee had already found that Higgins lied while negotiating the huge settlement, awarded after a single-day mediation that excluded evidence from Reynolds but that put her squarely in the frame as having been responsible for her claimed injuries.
Now Tottle has also found that Reynolds’ challenge to the compensation claim was “soundly based” and that it was reasonable for the former minister to question why she was excluded from the process.
Higgins’ own actions have effectively drawn more attention to the dodgy claim.
Reynolds is now suing the commonwealth over its conduct in the compensation case, claiming the Labor government’s mammoth payout had the effect of “publicly affirming” Higgins’ false allegations against her.
Brown also has lodged a Fair Work case against the commonwealth.
Of course, it’s possible that the government might have the decency to offer both Reynolds and Brown a just and honourable settlement, sparing them more grief.
But you wouldn’t bet your house on it.
