Lisa Wilkinson's hefty legal fees revealed
The eye-watering costs of Lisa Wilkinson's legal battle against Bruce Lehrmann after he unsuccessfully sued her for defamation has been revealed.
Lehrmann took Wilkinson and her former employer Network Ten to court following the airing of allegations by Brittany Higgins that she was raped in Parliament House in 2019.
The defamation suit was lost by Lehrmann in April after Justice Michael Lee found that Lehrmann had, on the balance of probabilities, assaulted Ms Higgins, therefore cannot be defamed for the allegations.
Ms Wilkinson has now returned to court in an attempt to recuperate approximately $1.8 million in legal fees from Network 10 after she decided to be represented separately to her former employer.
Documents released by the Federal Court on Thursday reveal the eye-watering cost behind Ms Wilkinson’s defence by high-profile defamation lawyer Sue Chrysanthou SC.
The documents detail numerous invoices issued to Ms Wilkinson throughout the years-long legal battle; the most recent being an invoice dated May 9th for $405,328.
The fee is listed as being for Ms Sue Chrysanthou‘s counsel; similar fees dating back to mid-2023 ranged in size from $10,340 to $97,988 before GST was added.
The largest single invoice issued to Ms Wilkinson was dated February 29th 2024 and amounted to a whopping $576,224.72 after GST, which included news subscriptions and lunches.
Early costs agreements sent to Gillis Delaney Lawyers, who Ms Wilkinson had retained to represent her, and Ms Chrysanthou quoted fees of $8,000 per day.
A range of other expenditures are included in the documents, including thousands of dollars for printing and folders, USB drives, and subscriptions to The Australian.
A referee is expected to be appointed for certain items that the Network claims did not come under legal costs, with Justice Lee foreshadowing a similar process for costs being asked of Mr Lehrmann.
In earlier written submissions, Network 10 said it did not have to pick up the bill for Ms Wilkinson’s legal costs which were “unnecessarily duplicative or wasteful”.
The referee, called for by Network 10, will be tasked with combing through the legal bills incurred by the former The Project host to decide whether the costs were reasonable, and whether she would be compensated.
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