Former West Australian senator Linda Reynolds has won her high-profile defamation case against her former staffer Brittany Higgins, whom she had accused of conducting an orchestrated campaign to end her political career.
It brings to an end a six-year saga of accusations and counter accusations between the two women, at least for now, pending a possible appeal by Ms Higgins.
WA Supreme Court Justice Paul Tottle is delivering his ruling on former Senator Linda Reynolds’s claim she was defamed in social media posts made by her former staffer Brittany Higgins.
1m agoWed 27 Aug 2025 at 2:38am
No plan to injure senator in interviews, says Justice
Ms Reynolds, however, failed to make the case that Ms Higgins and her husband, David Sharaz, had conspired to injure her in media interviews given by Ms Higgins revealing her allegation of being raped in Parliament in 2019.
Ms Reynolds argued that Ms Higgins concocted a “fairytale” about a political cover-up of the rape allegation in the lead-up to the 2019 election, which cast the former senator as the villain.
“The plaintiff was required to prove that the common or sole purpose of the defendant and Mr Sharaz, in planning the public disclosure of the defendant’s story, in early 2021, was to injure the plaintiff,” Justice Tottle said.
“The plaintiff has failed to establish this element of the case and her claim for damages have failed.”
21m agoWed 27 Aug 2025 at 2:18am
Two of three claims resulted in damages
Linda Reynolds had claimed three social media posts had been defamatory.
Justice Paul Tottle agreed, but said one of them — a tweet published on July 20, 2022 — was made by Ms Higgins on the basis of an honestly held opinion, fair comment and qualified privilege.
No costs were awarded on this count.
24m agoWed 27 Aug 2025 at 2:15am
Linda Reynolds awarded $315,000 in damages, plus $26,000 in interest payments
The damages relate to two of three social media posts made by Brittany Higgins which the Supreme Court found were defamatory of Ms Reynolds, in that they implied she had pressured Ms Higgins not to proceed with a genuine complaint of sexual assault and was hypocritical in her advocacy of women’s rights.
The posts also implied Ms Reynolds mishandled Ms Higgins allegation she was raped in Parliament House in 2019 while working for the former senator.
Justice Tottle found Ms Higgins’s defence of truth failed in relation to these comments.
33m agoWed 27 Aug 2025 at 2:06am
BREAKING: Former WA senator Linda Reynolds has won her defamation case against Brittany Higgins
Former senator Linda Reynolds has won her defamation case against former staffer Brittany Higgins.
Ms Reynolds, who retired from politics in June this year, sued Ms Higgins for the reputational hurt and distress she claims to have suffered because of social media posts made by Ms Higgins in 2023.
She also sued Ms Higgins’ partner David Sharaz (now her husband) for separate posts he made, but he chose not to contest the action, claiming he could not afford the legal fees.
The legal action was launched by Ms Reynolds following social media posts made by Ms Higgins beginning in 2022.
The former senator argued the posts trashed her reputation and caused her immense distress, following a period of ill health.
Ms Higgins wrote the posts four years after she was raped in the then-senator’s office by her colleague Bruce Lehrmann.
The finding of rape was made last year by Justice Michael Lee during a separate defamation action Mr Lehrmann had launched in the Federal Court against Channel 10 and journalist Lisa Wilkinson.
That finding was made on the balance of probabilities, the standard of proof in a civil court matter.
Separate criminal proceedings against Mr Lehrmann, which require a charge to be proved beyond reasonable doubt, were discontinued after juror misconduct and concerns for Ms Higgins’s welfare.
Mr Lehrmann has always denied raping Ms Higgins and last week his appeal against Justice Lee’s finding was heard by the Federal Court in Sydney.
Online posts defamatory
In the contentious social media posts at the heart of today’s judgement, Ms Higgins accused the senator of mishandling her rape allegation, of continuing to harass her in the aftermath, and of trying to “silence” sexual assault victims.
On Wednesday morning, Justice Tottle found three of the social media posts were defamatory, but one of them — a tweet published on July 20, 2022 — was made by Ms Higgins on the basis of an honestly held opinion, fair comment and qualified privilege.
No costs were awarded on this count.
However, Justice Tottle ordered Ms Higgins to pay a total of $315,000 to Ms Reynolds for the other counts, plus $26,000 in interest payments.
The five-week defamation trial was not about the rape itself however, but the posts written years later, after Ms Higgins spoke about her ordeal publicly in interviews with Channel 10’s The Project, and with news.com journalist Samantha Maiden.
In these she spoke about how unsupported she felt in the wake of the rape, and that she felt like she had been forced to join Ms Reynolds on the campaign trail shortly afterwards or her career would have suffered.
Senator Linda Reynolds says Brittany Higgins’s posts made it seem as though she had not supported her following her rape allegation. (ABC News: Cason Ho)
She felt her rape had become a political liability for Ms Reynolds and for Scott Morrison’s government ahead of the looming 2019 federal election, and as a result the senator had isolated her.
But in an explosive opening to the trial, Ms Reynolds’s lawyer Martin Bennett SC argued Ms Higgins had sought to portray his client as the villain in her “fairytale” story of political cover-up.
Throughout the defamation hearing, the senator insisted that she accepted Ms Higgins had been raped, and that she had provided the necessary support for the young woman in the following days and weeks.
Days of testimony
The senator spent five days on the stand, giving at times emotional testimony about Ms Higgins’s time working for her, how she became aware of the young woman’s rape allegation and how she responded.
Ms Reynolds insisted she had supported Ms Higgins throughout her ordeal, including providing her with the opportunity to have employee counselling.
She also detailed extensively the toll Ms Higgins’s allegation that she was an unsupportive boss had taken on her health, her personal life and her political career.
“Like a fairground punching clown” was the memorable phrase she used on the witness stand to describe how bruised she felt emotionally.
Brittany Higgins has been found to have defamed former Senator Linda Reynolds. (AAP: Dean Lewins)
The stress had caused her to be diagnosed with an ongoing heart condition, she said, suggesting it had also effectively ended her political career.
Ms Reynolds lost her portfolio as defence minister in March 2021, soon after the rape allegation was revealed and while she was on medical leave, and announced last year she would not recontest her Senate seat.
Ms Higgins did not testify at the trial on medical grounds, forcing Mr Bennett to piece together her media interviews and testimony from other court cases, including Mr Lehrmann’s ultimately aborted rape trial.
He also used text messages from Ms Higgins to her then boyfriend David Sharaz to show that rather than being isolated during her six weeks campaigning for the Liberal senator in Perth, Ms Higgins had attended social events and dinners with her boss, and spoken of having a good time.
Mr Sharaz, the third party in the proceedings, opted not to contest the case before it opened, claiming he could not afford the legal fees.
Ms Higgins’s lawyer Kate Pedersen made no comment as she left the court.
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