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Brittany Higgins’ partner David Sharaz will front court in a defamation case levelled against him by West Australian Liberal Senator Linda Reynolds in a three-week trial provisionally set for May 2024.
Reynolds is demanding the former press gallery journalist pay damages, as well as aggravated damages, over five social media posts, and has requested an injunction preventing the material from surfacing in future.
Liberal senator Linda Reynolds (centre) has taken both Brittany Higgins and her partner, David Sharaz, to court.Credit: Nine
At a court hearing in Perth on Wednesday afternoon, Justice Marcus Solomon said he was setting the trial dates far in advance to avoid “skirmishes” between the two parties from developing “a life of their own” and dragging the case out.
The case has already been beset by delays, with the court having to issue special orders in July just to serve Sharaz with defamation papers, after Reynolds’ lawyers spent six months trying to track him down.
Sharaz’s lawyer Jason McLaurin said he planned to submit a strikeout claim against all imputations against his client, but this was an issue he wanted to raise with Reynolds’ team before officially doing so.
He also said Reynolds had decided to sue a private citizen in the WA Supreme Court when the case had nothing to do with the state, and there were grounds to consider that the matter should be heard under ACT laws, as Reynolds was only known as a senator.
Reynolds’ lawyer Martin Bennett said that claim “grasps at an imaginary straw to bog this matter down”, and it was “inappropriate for my friend across the table to make such an outrageous comment” about what Reynolds was known for.
“She is a senator for WA, elected by voters in WA … her reputation is one grounded in WA,” he said.
Bennett also said it was “farfetched and ambitious” to say the imputations were false.
Solomon told the court that dismissing Reynolds’ position in WA “minimises the significance of that to a degree I find a little surprising”.
He said everything he had heard highlighted his concern the back-and-forth between parties would drag on if he did not set a preliminary trial date.
“It’s amazing how fast these issues can be sorted with trial dates in sight,” Solomon said.
The next court hearing will be on August 24, for the matters raised by McLaurin to be addressed. The preliminary trial has been set for three weeks, starting on May 7.
Wednesday’s hearing comes just days after Reynolds made good on her threat to sue Higgins for damages over two social media posts in which she accused Reynolds of using the press to harass her.
The former defence minister also said the posts were a breach of a deed of settlement and release the pair signed in March 2021, which contained a non-disparagement clause.
She has asked for two injunctions preventing Higgins from publishing defamatory material about her and preventing her from further breaches of the deed.
In 2021, Higgins alleged she was raped in Reynolds’ parliamentary office by her colleague Bruce Lehrmann.
A criminal trial against Lehrmann, who has maintained his innocence throughout, was aborted last year due to juror misconduct, and the charge was dropped and a retrial dismissed over fears for Higgins’ mental health.
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