WA Liberal Senator Linda Reynolds will fight a bid by former staffer Brittany Higgins to delay their high-stakes defamation trial, beginning in less than three months.
This masthead understands that in an urgent hearing on Tuesday, Higgins’ lawyers intend to request the six-week trial set down for July 24 be postponed.
Senator Linda Reynolds says she will continue with her defamation lawsuit against Brittany Higgins and her fiance David Sharaz unless they accept findings there was no cover-up.Credit: Trevor Collens
But Reynolds’ lawyers will oppose the motion.
The senator sued Higgins and her fiance, former press gallery journalist David Sharaz, for damages over more than seven social media posts she claimed falsely defamed her — including one in which Higgins accused Reynolds of using the press to harass her.
Reynolds intends to claim the opposite to be true — that the pair hatched a plan to harass her with the help of journalist Lisa Wilkinson and Channel 10 producer Angus Llewellyn ahead of a tell-all interview with The Project.
Both Higgins and Sharaz have defended their respective cases, which are being heard concurrently due to their overlap.
The hearing will be the first since Federal Court justice Michael Lee found, to the civil standard, that — on the balance of probabilities — fellow staffer Bruce Lehrmann had raped Higgins in then-cabinet minister Reynolds’ parliamentary office in 2019.
The ruling was part of the high-profile defamation action Lehrmann, who has maintained his innocence throughout, brought against Network 10 and Wilkinson over the interview.
But Lee also ruled there was no political cover-up, prompting Opposition Leader Peter Dutton to insist Reynolds had been vindicated and suggest that Higgins and Sharaz should apologise.
Source Agencies
