More than 56,000 pages of Brittany Higgins’ mobile phone records downloaded by the Australian Federal Police will form a vital part of the litigation brought against her by Senator Linda Reynolds.
The documents were originally produced for Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation proceedings against Network 10 and will be used in the defamation case against Ms Higgins, which goes to trial on 2 August.
Senator Reynolds’ lawyer, Martin Bennett, told reporters outside the court that they needed to find pages that were relevant to the case and would be used in a different light than the matter involving Lehrmann and Network 10.
“Our case is a little different, we have to review it again,” he said.
‘We can already see that there are documents inside that are useful and need to be extracted.’
Lawyers for Ms Higgins and Senator Reynolds were at the Supreme Court in Washington on Monday for a directions hearing two weeks before the trial.
Senator Reynolds is suing her former staffer over claims that social media posts made by Ms Higgins and her husband David Sharaz damaged her reputation.
She claims the posts suggested he had been involved in a political cover-up of Ms Higgins’s allegations that she had been raped in Parliament by colleague Bruce Lehrmann, a claim he has always denied.
Senator Reynolds is suing her former staffer over claims that social media posts made by Ms Higgins damaged her reputation.
Judge Michael Lee’s Conclusions
Earlier this year in the Federal Court, Judge Michael Lee ruled that he was satisfied on a civil basis (which is different from a criminal basis) that Ms Higgins was raped.
The discovery follows legal action Lehrmann took against Network 10 and journalist Lisa Wilkinson over a report about the alleged rape on The Project in 2021.
Mr Lehrmann has appealed the decision.
Judge Lee also found that allegations of political cover-up involving Senator Reynolds and others were not true, a finding that Senator Reynolds said vindicated her.
Ms Reynolds told reporters she needed to clear her name and that Judge Lee was very clear that there was never any political conspiracy and that “many people’s lives had been destroyed as a result of Ms Higgins’ allegations”.
“There was simply never any political conspiracy and there were certainly allegations of mistreatment as the evidence at Lee’s trial has absolutely demonstrated,” he said.
Brittany Higgins’ cell phone records will form a vital part of the litigation brought against her
Criminal evidence
In October 2022, a criminal trial in the ACT Supreme Court against Mr Lehrmann was dropped due to jury misconduct.
Mr. Lehrmann pleaded not guilty to the charge.
A mistrial was declared and the jury was dismissed after it was discovered that one of the jurors had conducted his own investigation outside of what was presented in court.
The trial was scheduled for February 2023 but was abandoned and the charge dropped when Director of Public Prosecutions Shane Drumgold considered another trial would pose an unacceptable risk to Ms Higgins’ mental health.