Watch live: Bruce Lehrmann's high-stakes bid to overturn rape finding
Bruce Lehrmann's high-stakes bid to overturn a damning finding that he raped his then colleague Brittany Higgins in Parliament House starts in Sydney on Wednesday.
The former federal Liberal staffer is appealing against Federal Court Justice Michael Lee's landmark decision last year dismissing his defamation case against Network Ten and journalist Lisa Wilkinson.
The Full Court of the Federal Court – Justices Michael Wigney, Craig Colvin and Wendy Abraham – will hear the appeal over three days, starting at 10.15am (AEST).
Lee found Ten and Wilkinson had proved to the civil standard – on the balance of probabilities – that Lehrmann raped Higgins in the office of their then-boss, Liberal senator Linda Reynolds, in the early hours of March 23, 2019.
This is lower than the criminal standard of beyond reasonable doubt.
Lee found Lehrmann was 'hell-bent on having sex' with Higgins, had encouraged her to drink, and did 'not care one way or another whether [she] ... understood or agreed to what was going on'.
Lehrmann's ACT Supreme Court criminal trial over the alleged sexual assault of Higgins was aborted in October 2022 due to juror misconduct, and the charges were later dropped altogether owing to concerns about Higgins' mental health.
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