Former Defence Minister Linda Reynolds launched new legal action against Brittany Higgins in Perth on Monday morning.
Senator Reynolds –Higgins’ former boss– is suing both Higgins and her partner David Sharaz for defamation over social media posts made in July last year.
In December 2022, Higgins signed a deed of settlement with the commonwealth of Australia, seeking compensation in light of the alleged rape. The settlement was originally confidential, but was made public as part of Lehrmann’s defamation case.
Documents show that Higgins received $2.445 million. More than half of this was in respect to her loss of earning capacity. Other factors were legal costs, medical expenses, domestic assistance as well as compensation for “hurt, distress and humiliation suffered by Ms Higgins”.
It’s been reported that Reynolds’ legal team seeks to discover who is the trustee of the trust fund protecting Higgins’ settlement money. The team is probing claims that following the settlement, Higgins set up a discretionary investment trust in February.
In late April, Higgins’ legal team failed in a bid to get Reynolds’ defamation trial delayed. The Liberal Senator warned Higgins that she’ll be “regrettably” force to proceed with the the legal application tor prove there was never a cover-up of her alleged rape.
“My legal action against both Ms Higgins and Mr Sharaz was never about the allegation of rape. My action deals with what Justice Lee exposed as false allegations raised two years after the rape. Allegations that I and my staff, specifically Fiona Brown, not only failed to support Ms Higgins but subjected her to a dreadful and damaging political cover-up,” Reynolds said.
Higgins has apologised to both both Reynolds and her then-chief of staff, Brown, following Justice Lee’s civil judgement– that Bruce Lehrmann had raped Higgins on the balance of probabilities– in the defamation case brought by Lehrmann against Network 10.
Justice Lee also found allegations of an attempted “political cover up” of the incident were “objectively short on facts, but long on speculation and internal inconsistencies”.
In her apology, Higgins said: “Senator Reynolds and Fiona Brown have also been hurt and for that I am also sorry.”
“My perceptions and feelings about what happened in the days and weeks after my rape are different from theirs. I deeply regret that we have not yet found common ground.”
Despite this apology, however, Senator Reynolds has made it clear she’ll continue to move to resolve her legal claim.
“At enormous emotional and financial cost, I have fought for three years to expose the truth in relation to my conduct,’’ Senator Reynolds said.
Higgins was previously hospitalised in Perth this year, following a day of mediation over the defamation case with Reynolds, which failed to resolve the matter.
“Legal negotiations are unfortunately sometimes difficult and testing for all participants and yesterday was a tiring and difficult day for all of us,” Senator Reynolds said in a statement at the time.
Higgins’ partner, Sharaz, has announced via the platform X (formerly Twitter) that he won’t be defending the claims against him by Reynolds.
“Despite our best efforts, Linda Reynolds has not accepted attempts to resolve this matter through mediation and Brittany may now be exposed to another trial. It will be her third,” Sharaz posted on X.
“I cannot afford to pay legal costs to defend myself over a six-week trial.”
“As a result I have informed the court that I will not fight Reynolds’ legal action any more.”