The Toowoomba District Court determined that Lehrmann failed to prove why he needed that access
Production company Stranger Than Fiction Films Ltd has won its challenge against Bruce Lehrmann in Toowoomba District Court, reported The Australian.
Lehrmann, who was once a policy advisor to former Home Affairs assistant minister Linda Reynolds CSC, had filed a subpoena last month over the documentary film Silenced – including the final cut, b-rolls and the distribution list – prior to its release in Queensland. The film, which debuted at the Sydney Film Festival this month, focuses on the use of defamation laws against assault survivors and is set for a September release.
The documentary featured former Liberal junior staffer Brittany Higgins, who revealed in 2021 that a man who was revealed to be Lehrmann had raped her after a 2019 work party. Prosecutors dropped the case in December 2022 on the grounds of trauma.
Lehrmann sued Network Ten Pty Limited and journalist Lisa Wilkinson for defamation in relation to the Higgins case.
Zali Burrows, Lehrmann’s lawyer, claimed that potential jurors could be influenced by discourse of the Higgins case; Lehrmann is presently facing other rape charges in Toowoomba. Dauid Sibtain SC, who represented Stranger Than Fiction Films, countered that Burrows’ argument was speculative and that Higgins’ comments in the documentary did not add to publicly available information.
Judge Deborah Richards determined that the footage Lehrmann sought access to did not serve a “legitimate forensic purpose” in relation to his current case, per a statement published by The Australian.
“In my view, the fact that a large part of the defendant’s affidavit filed in this application is dedicated to Ms Higgins’ social media demonstrates the real difficulty the defendant has in justifying this subpoena. It relies on the film being available in Toowoomba, and then the jury pool turning to social media to connect the film to this trial”, Richards said in her ruling, a snippet of which was published by The Australian.
She pointed out that part of the reason why the Higgins case remained in the public consciousness was Lehrmann’s pursuit of civil proceedings. She said any injunction to halt the distribution of Silenced was unlikely to succeed.
Stranger Than Fiction Films is pursuing a claim for the legal action’s costs. The matter is set for a hearing next week.
