Brittany Higgins hit with $1m+ legal bill after defamation loss to ex-boss Linda Reynolds

Higgins must cover most of Linda Reynolds’s $1m+ legal bills after defamation showdown

Brittany Higgins has been ordered to pay the bulk of former senator Linda Reynolds’s legal costs after losing their high-profile defamation trial, with the final bill expected to exceed $1 million.

The ruling, delivered by Justice Paul Tottle in the WA Supreme Court, comes just weeks after Reynolds successfully sued her former staffer over a series of damaging social media posts. In August, Justice Tottle found Higgins defamed Reynolds, awarding the retired politician $315,000 in damages plus $26,000 in interest.

On Tuesday, the judge went further, directing Higgins to pay 80 per cent of Reynolds’s legal expenses. While the exact figure was not disclosed, Reynolds’s lawyer Martin Bennett confirmed costs would run well past $1 million, covering a full legal team including solicitors, an additional lawyer and a paralegal.

Reynolds, who retired from politics earlier this year, said she was “pleased with the order” and insisted it reflected the seriousness of the reputational damage she suffered. She had argued that Higgins’s online claims caused immense personal distress during a period of ill health and contributed to the premature end of her political career.

Settlement bid dismissed

The judgment also revealed that Higgins attempted to settle the matter in July 2024, just four days before the trial began. She offered to pay $200,000 towards Reynolds’s legal fees, funded by her parents, and suggested a “statement of mutual regret” acknowledging hurt on both sides.

The proposed statement would have included Reynolds recognising Higgins’s genuine belief that support had been lacking after her 2019 rape at Parliament House, while Higgins would have acknowledged Reynolds’s distress over the social media posts.

Justice Tottle ruled the offer “unreasonable”, noting it fell far short of a genuine apology and would have conveyed that Higgins still maintained the truth of her allegations. He concluded that Reynolds would have received no real vindication of her reputation.

A costly outcome

Higgins’s legal team had sought to cap Bennett’s hourly fees at $781 and argued she should pay no more than two-thirds of the costs. Justice Tottle rejected that, but did reduce the order by 20 per cent, reflecting his dismissal of Reynolds’s claim that Higgins conspired to destroy her political career.

The outcome leaves Higgins with a crushing financial liability. Her lawyers unsuccessfully tried to delay Tuesday’s ruling until the conclusion of separate Federal Court proceedings, where Reynolds is challenging the $2.4 million compensation payment Higgins received from the Commonwealth in 2022. Reynolds argues that settlement was reached in bad faith and undermined her interests.

Justice Tottle dismissed the attempt to postpone, ruling that any potential “double dipping” arguments could be resolved by the Federal Court.

Posts that sparked the case

At the centre of the defamation battle were three social media posts from 2022 and 2023 in which Higgins alleged Reynolds had failed to support her in the aftermath of her rape and had sought to silence sexual assault victims.

Reynolds consistently rejected those claims, pointing to her offers of counselling and support. She described the toll the allegations took on her health and family life as devastating.

In his original finding, Justice Tottle said Higgins’s claim of a cover-up “had no foundation in fact” and that her allegation of inadequate support was “based on an incomplete and misleading account of the facts.”

Fallout continues

The financial penalty adds a new layer to a saga that has dominated Australian politics and media since Higgins came forward with her rape allegation in 2021. Earlier this year, Justice Michael Lee of the Federal Court found “on the balance of probabilities” that Bruce Lehrmann raped Higgins in Reynolds’s Parliament House office in March 2019, during a separate defamation case brought by Lehrmann.

For Higgins, the defamation ruling has left her not only with damages and reputational setbacks but now a potentially ruinous legal bill. For Reynolds, it marks a significant legal victory — though her battle over Higgins’s compensation payout has yet to be resolved.