The Guardian YouTube web page, 15 April 2024:
Note: The delivery of this judgment is broken by technical difficulties at 4:37mins into the video and recommences where broken delivery left off at 39:22mins into the video and continues uninterrupted to the end of proceedings.
The Guardian online, 15 April 2024:
Bruce Lehrmann has lost his defamation case against Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson, bringing to an end a sprawling legal saga which has gripped the nation. In a live oral summary that took two and a half hours, Justice Michael Lee said the former Liberal staffer was not defamed by Wilkinson and Ten when The Project broadcast an interview with Brittany Higgins on Monday 15 February 2021 in which she alleged she was raped in Parliament House. He found that on the balance of probabilities Lehrmann raped Higgins on the minister’s couch in Parliament House in 2019.
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At Page 145 of the judgment transcript:
600. Notwithstanding the need for pause, I am satisfied that it is more likely than not that Mr Lehrmann’s state of mind was such that he was so intent upon gratification to be indifferent to Ms Higgins’ consent, and hence went ahead with sexual intercourse without caring whether she consented. This conclusion is not mandated by, but is consistent with, my finding that intercourse commenced when Ms Higgins was not fully cognitively aware of what was happening.
At Page 150 of the judgment transcript:
VI Conclusion on Rape
620. Mr Lehrmann raped Ms Higgins.
621. I hasten to stress; this is a finding on the balance of probabilities. This finding should not be misconstrued or mischaracterised as a finding that I can exclude all reasonable hypotheses consistent with innocence. As I have explained, there is a substantive difference between the criminal standard of proof and the civil standard of proof and, as the tribunal of fact, I have only to be reasonably satisfied that Mr Lehrmann has acted as I have found, and I am not obliged to reach that degree of certainty necessary to support conviction upon a criminal charge.
At Page 290 of the judgment transcript:
1071. Mr Lehrmann behaved disgracefully. He defended the criminal charge on a false basis, lied to police, and then allowed that lie to go uncorrected before the jury. He instructed his unwitting and hence blameless senior counsel to cross-examine a complainant of sexual assault, in two legal proceedings, on a knowingly false premise.
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Lehrmann v Network Ten Pty Limited (Trial Judgment) [2024] FCA 369 as a written 324-page transcript can be found at:
https://www.fedcourt.gov.au/services/access-to-files-and-transcripts/online-files/lehrmann#103
and is also published in easily searchable form at:
https://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/FCA/2024/369.html
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