{"id":84504,"date":"2025-08-21T08:24:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T08:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/84504\/"},"modified":"2025-08-21T08:24:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T08:24:08","slug":"bruce-lehrmanns-appeal-over-his-failed-defamation-case-ends-abruptly-as-justices-express-frustration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/84504\/","title":{"rendered":"Bruce Lehrmann’s appeal over his failed defamation case ends abruptly as justices express frustration"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bruce Lehrmann’s appeal over his failed defamation case has ended abruptly, after Federal Court judges expressed frustration with how his lawyer argued her case.<\/p>\n

The former Liberal staffer is appealing the result of his defamation case against Network Ten and journalist Lisa Wilkinson, in which Justice Michael Lee found, on the balance of probabilities, Mr Lehrmann had raped his then-colleague Brittany Higgins at Parliament House in Canberra in 2019.<\/a><\/p>\n

Sexual assault\u00a0support lines:<\/p>\n

Mr Lehrmann has always maintained his innocence and launched the appeal in the Federal Court seeking to overturn that finding.<\/p>\n

On the second day of the appeal, Mr Lehrmann’s lawyer, Zali Burrows, told the court Justice Lee “made up his own case” of what happened that night in Parliament House, arguing the defamation case turned into a “quasi-rape trial”.<\/p>\n

“This is not, with respect, a judge’s role to do that,” Ms Burrows said.<\/p>\n

“Justice Lee \u2014 who’s a very famous judge \u2014 we submit he shouldn’t have gone on his own fact-finding mission.”<\/p>\n

She said that was an error on Justice Lee’s behalf because Mr Lehrmann was not able to respond to the judge’s “version” of a “non-violent rape”, which was a “different version” of events than was pleaded by Network Ten or Ms Wilkinson.<\/p>\n

“Regrettably, I don’t like to use the word ‘soft rape’, but I have to use it,” she said.<\/p>\n

“No doubt the media are going to make fun of that.<\/p>\n

“Mr Lehrmann could have conducted the case differently if the version of the case found had been put to Mr Lehrmann at the beginning,” Ms Burrows said.’Struggling to understand’\"Bruce<\/p>\n

Bruce Lehrmann’s lawyer Zali Burrows was denied two requests to adjourn. (AAP: Steve Markham)<\/p>\n

Justice Craig Colvin, one of three judges presiding over the appeal, urged Ms Burrows to spell out her argument more specifically.<\/p>\n

“It is all very well to say these things out loud, but you need to explain why this is a different case,” he said.<\/p>\n

“The findings His Honour has made are all within the four corners of what was described.”<\/p>\n

Justice Michael Wigney also joined Justice Colvin’s frustration, saying he was “struggling to understand” what Ms Burrows was attempting to argue.<\/p>\n

The comments from the justices came after they raised similar questions around the logic of Mr Lehrmann’s grounds of appeal on the first day of the hearing.<\/a><\/p>\n

Today, Ms Burrows described Justice Lee’s judgment as “a consolation prize” for Network Ten, since he was not persuaded as to the network’s version of events.<\/p>\n

Though she promptly apologised for using that phrase.<\/p>\n

She went on to claim Justice Lee thought Ms Higgins “looked like a victim” and said it was not for a judge to make findings based on the “demeanour of a witness”.<\/p>\n

In response, Justice Wigney said: “I’m not sure that that is getting close to an accurate summary of his critical finding.”<\/p>\n

Court refuses requests to adjourn<\/p>\n

Ms Burrows made her final submissions after a failed attempt to have the hearing adjourned until Friday morning because she said she needed more time to consider various matters, including clarifications on some of the grounds of appeal.<\/p>\n

That request was denied, but the court did break for an early lunch.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Bruce Lehrmann is appealing the findings in his failed defamation case. (ABC News: Abubakr Sajid)<\/p>\n

After lunch, she again requested that the matter be adjourned until Friday because she “embarrassingly” could not find some documents.<\/p>\n

Again, that was denied, but a brief adjournment was allowed and Ms Burrows returned to conclude her submissions.<\/p>\n

“When Mr Lehrmann leaves the court today, I’m pretty sure no one in the back of the court or any of the reporters downstairs are going to have anything nice to say about him,” she said.<\/p>\n

“Not even to ask ‘are you okay?'”<\/p>\n

Ms Burrows then began explaining the “level of vitriol and hatred” that Mr Lehrmann had received, but she was cut off by Justice Colvin.<\/p>\n

“Is this a speech or is this a submission?” he asked.<\/p>\n

Shortly afterwards, the hearing, which had originally been slated to run into Friday, was concluded.<\/p>\n

The justices have reserved their decision to be delivered at a later date.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bruce Lehrmann’s appeal over his failed defamation case has ended abruptly, after Federal Court judges expressed frustration with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84505,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1110,61971,13394,70,43,63597,63595,55416,63596,61972,44,43016,13396,63594,670,41,39,42,40,13395],"class_list":["post-84504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-appeal","tag-brittany-higgins","tag-bruce-lehrmann","tag-federal-court","tag-headlines","tag-justice-michael-lee","tag-liberal-staffer","tag-lisa-wilkinson","tag-matthew-collins","tag-network-ten","tag-news","tag-parliament-house","tag-rape","tag-sue-chrysanthou","tag-sydney","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-zali-burrows"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}