The strained relationship between Lisa Wilkinson and Network Ten is expected to be revealed in the Federal Court on Tuesday.
Wilkinson will claim that the network removed her as host of The Project amid the collapse of Bruce Lehrmann’s first criminal trial in June 2022 and the fallout surrounding her Logies speech just days before the hearing.
ACT Chief Justice Lucy McCallum was concerned that Wilkinson’s speech would bias the jury against Lehrmann and delay the trial until October 2022, and criticized Wilkinson for giving the speech in the first place.
In court Tuesday, Wilkinson will reportedly argue that the network gave approval to her speech, but then blamed her for the public fallout.
At that time, Wilkinson resigned as host of The Project, citing “toxicity” in the media.
However, it is understood she will argue that Logies’ speech was the real reason.
Those details have never been revealed because the legal advice between Network Ten and Wilkinson was protected by legal privilege, but that was waived for the cross-claim.
When Lehrmann brought the defamation case against the Network, naming Wilkinson as the first defendant, she hired her own lawyer, Sue Chrysanthou, to defend her rather than using Ten’s lawyers.
He didn’t feel like the network had his best interests at heart.
The matter will run from Tuesday to Wednesday, and was initially planned to deal solely with Wilkinson’s civil matter against the network.
But after Judge Lee saw the documentation prepared by the parties, he decided there was new evidence relevant to the main defamation claim.