While the parties have been engaged in mediation, Reynolds’ lawyer, Martin Bennett, warned the court during an April 3 hearing that parties should prepare for the six-week trial scheduled for July 24.
“If we sit around hoping for things to settle, they never do,” he said.
A spokesperson for Bennett confirmed the defamation action is still pending.
Lawyers for Higgins and Sharaz have been contacted for comment. Reynolds declined to comment when approached.
Higgins provided evidence to Lehrmann’s defamation proceedings last year that the reason she spoke to media was because she didn’t want to be “complicit” in a cover-up over the sexual assault, and said during Lehrmann’s abandoned 2022 criminal trial she felt pressured not to pursue the complaint.
Reynolds denied this during the trial, saying she encouraged Higgins to go to the police.
Former ACT director of public prosecutions Shane Drumgold SC also sensationally suggested a political conspiracy to derail Lehrmann’s prosecution during an inquiry into the case last year before recanting the allegation the next day.
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Last month, Reynolds received a formal apology and a $90,000 settlement from the ACT government over defamatory comments made by Drumgold in a letter to the territory’s Chief Police Officer Neil Gaughan that became public.
Justice Lee said: “When examined properly and without partiality, the cover-up allegation was objectively short on facts but long on speculation and internal inconsistencies – trying to particularise it during the evidence was like trying to grab a column of smoke. But despite its logical and evidentiary flaws, Ms Higgins’ boyfriend selected and contacted two journalists and then Ms Higgins advanced her account to them, and through them, to others.”
Dutton said Lee should be congratulated on his judgment after going through the case “with a fine-tooth comb”.
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“He’s obviously a first-class operator. I’ve had the great pleasure of meeting him only on one occasion. He’s a particularly impressive individual and it should restore faith, if there was a doubt in faith, of our judicial system and what operates there. It’s obviously a highly complex, sordid affair,” he said.
The case is one of several legal proceedings triggered by Lehrmann’s criminal trial, which was aborted in October 2022 due to juror misconduct.
In March 2021, Reynolds agreed to pay damages to Higgins as part of a defamation settlement over calling her former staffer a “lying cow”. Reynolds maintains she did not make the comment in relation to the rape allegation but in response to news reports about her handling of it.
