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Liberal Senator Linda Reynolds has filed a lawsuit against the Commonwealth and major law firm HWL Ebsworth over a compensation payment made to Brittany Higgins in 2022.
Linda Reynolds lodged proceedings in the Federal Court over a $2.4 million payment made to Brittany Higgins, a former employee who claimed she was not supported by the senator after coming forward with rape allegations against Bruce Lehrmann.
According to reports in the national broadcaster, Reynolds claimed the payment had conveyed the allegations were “so true, so damning, so abhorrent” as to warrant settlement after one day of mediation.
The Commonwealth was sued for breaching fiduciary duty owed to Reynolds. She has also pressed for a negligence finding to be made against HWL Ebsworth, the firm that acted for the Commonwealth.
“The Attorney-General and his ministers had been such staunch public supporters of Higgins, politicising her untested, unsubstantiated and untrue allegations against me and it is impossible to reconcile how they considered they could act in my best interests and advocate for me in those circumstances,” Reynolds said via her lawyer, Martin Bennett, in a statement to the ABC.
Reynolds filed defamation proceedings against Higgins, and a trial was held end of last year. A decision has yet to be handed down.
Lehrmann has never been found guilty on a criminal standard of the rape and has continued to strenuously deny the allegations.
In concluding a defamation proceeding brought by Lehrmann against Network Ten and journalist Lisa Wilkinson, Justice Michael Lee of the Federal Court found, on a civil standard, that the rape occurred.
One component of the Network’s reporting was of an alleged “cover-up” of the rape by senior officials, including Reynolds.
In Justice Lee’s judgment, he said this allegation was “objectively short on facts, but long on speculation and internal inconsistencies” and that trying to particularise them “was like trying to grab a column of smoke”.
“The publication of accusations of corrupt conduct in putting up roadblocks and forcing a rape victim to choose between her career and justice won The Project team … a glittering prize, but when the accusation is examined properly, it was supposition without reasonable foundation in verifiable fact,” Justice Lee added.
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Naomi Neilson is a senior journalist with a focus on court reporting for Lawyers Weekly.
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