Liability, imputations and truth: what the judge will consider in his Bruce Lehrmann defamation trial verdict

Brittany Higgins, Bruce Lehrmann and Lisa Wilkinson. Justice Michael Lee is to hand down his decision in Lehrmann’s defamation case against Network Ten and Wilkinson.Brittany Higgins, Bruce Lehrmann and Lisa Wilkinson. Justice Michael Lee is to hand down his decision in Lehrmann’s defamation case against Network Ten and Wilkinson.The new evidence delayed the verdict, which is now scheduled for Monday 15 April, and it remains to be seen whether it will influence the outcome.

David Rolph, a professor of law at the University of Sydney law school and the leading academic expert in Australia on defamation law, says if Lee decides the respondents – Ten and the presenter, Lisa Wilkinson – did identify the applicant, they will be found liable. The first is that he raped Higgins in Reynolds’ office; the second that he “continued to rape Brittany Higgins after she woke up mid-rape and was crying and telling him to stop at least half a dozen times”.

“So even though it’s not the criminal standard of beyond reasonable doubt, Justice Lee would have to be positively satisfied, on the balance of probabilities, that that was substantially true.”In their defence of truth, Ten and Wilkinson had to establish the “substantial truth” of the key allegations.

“There is no independent evidence for a rape,” the applicant’s final submission says. “There is no rape examination, no doctors’ reports, no witnesses.”

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