Network Ten will have to shell out a whopping $1.15 million to cover Lisa Wilkinson’s legal fees incurred while defending Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation suit last year.
On Monday, the Federal Court said Wilkinson and her former employer, Network Ten, had arrived at an agreement after 12 months of disputation.
Lehrmann filed a suit against Ten and Wilkinson claiming he was defamed by an interview the star journalist had with Brittany Higgins when rape allegations against him first surfaced.
The former Liberal staffer lost his high-stakes defamation bid in April when Federal Court judge Justice Michael Lee found, on the balance of probabilities, that Mr Lehrmann did rape Ms Higgins on a couch in Parliament House on March 23, 2019.
Lehrmann was ordered to pay $2 million but was not expected to be able to pay it, with his lawyers telling the court they were working “pro bono” due to his insufficient funds.
Ten agreed to pay $558,548.30 of Wilkinson’s fees, despite the former Project panellist originally seeking more than $1.8 million.
Wilkinson has since received that amount from Ten and will now receive an additional $591,451.70 by March 19, under new court orders.
Ten was found liable to pay Wilkinson’s legal bills in the form of “properly incurred and reasonable in amount” indemnity costs.
In May, Network 10 barrister Zoe Graus told the court some of Ms Wilkinson’s costs were not in dispute by the broadcaster.
“Our position is relatively clear, we would hope from our written submissions on the costs application, in that there are certainly costs which we do not dispute are recoverable by Ms Wilkinson,” she said.
“It’s more a matter of being able to identify those costs on a line item basis.”
Ms Wilkinson hired her own legal team, including top defamation barrister Sue Chrysanthou SC, to defend her in the proceedings brought on by Mr Lehrmann.
Network 10 previously said it would have some liability to reimburse Ms Wilkinson for part of her legal bill in the event she could not recover costs from Mr Lehrmann.
However, the broadcaster argued it should not cover any costs incurred in a “duplicative or wasteful manner”.
