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‘He won’t buy a ticket on the Titanic’: Sharaz retreats as bid to delay Reynolds’ defamation row fails
By Jesinta Burton and Ezra Holt
Lawyers for Brittany Higgins’ fiance, David Sharaz, have declared he can no longer fight the “titanic” defamation action levelled by WA Liberal senator Linda Reynolds as the court rejected Higgins’ bid to delay the looming trial.
The parties gathered for an urgent hearing on Tuesday, in which Higgins’ lawyers sought to postpone the six-week trial set down for July 24 until 2025 amid fears for her mental health.
Senator Linda Reynolds says she will continue with her defamation lawsuit against Brittany Higgins and her fiance David Sharaz unless they accept findings there was no cover-up.Credit: Trevor Collens
Higgins’ lawyer, Nicholas Owens, also argued there had not been enough time to prepare following the historic Federal Court judgment, which he said had been “highly traumatising” for his client.
Sharaz’s lawyer, Jason MacLaurin, declared he did not have the means to continue defending the “juggernaut” of a litigation – which has already been the subject of a marathon nine-hour mediation hearing.
“Mr Sharaz wants to impress on the court that this defamation action is going to be horrendously expensive … and his financial means do not permit him to support it,” he said.
“He probably won’t buy a ticket on the Titanic, that’s where this action is heading … it’s extremely expensive and heading for disaster.
“Whatever Senator Reynolds is doing, it is something other than genuinely being concerned about three tweets that David Sharaz made on social media.”
At the same time, Sharaz took to social media to publicly declare his intention to back out of the lawsuit and urge Reynolds to settle, insisting it was time to let Higgins heal.
Reynolds’ lawyer, Martin Bennett, hit back and argued Sharaz lived in a chateau in France and had recruited senior counsel to defend his position.
“He says, ‘I’ll do anything to make this right’ … the first thing he can do is step up to the plate and apologise,” Bennett said.
While accepting the present litigation and past matters imposed a burden on Higgins’ mental health, Justice Paul Tottle said he was satisfied with the grounds on which Reynolds sued and the adverse effect the conduct had on her own physical and mental health.
He said procedural concerns expressed by Higgins’ legal team could be accommodated without vacating the trial date, ruling it was not expedient or in the interests of justice for the trial dates to be vacated.
“In a very real sense the court is being called to balance effects of mental health of two major protagonists that has had,” Tottle said.
“The plaintiff has a legitimate concern to have the actions heard and disposed of without delay.
“Taking steps to have trial at earliest possible date is the most effective way of addressing health concerns to which both sides point.”
The senator sued Higgins and Sharaz for damages over more than seven social media posts she claimed falsely defamed her – including one in which Higgins accused Reynolds of using the press to harass her.
Reynolds intends to claim the opposite to be true – that the pair hatched a plan to harass her with the help of journalist Lisa Wilkinson and Channel 10 producer Angus Llewellyn before a tell-all interview with The Project.
Both Higgins and Sharaz have defended their respective cases to date, which are being heard concurrently due to their overlap.
The statement released by David Sharaz during Tuesday’s urgent hearing.
The hearing was the first since Federal Court justice Michael Lee found, to the civil standard, that – on the balance of probabilities – Higgins’ then-colleague, Bruce Lehrmann, raped her in then-cabinet minister Reynolds’ parliamentary office in 2019.
The ruling was part of the high-profile defamation action Lehrmann, who has maintained his innocence throughout, brought against Network 10 and Wilkinson over the interview on The Project.
But Lee also ruled there was no political cover-up, which prompted Opposition Leader Peter Dutton to insist Reynolds had been vindicated, and suggest that Higgins and Sharaz should apologise to the senator.
After Lee’s ruling, Higgins took to social media to apologise to Reynolds and her former chief of staff, Fiona Brown, while expressing deep regret that the parties had not yet found “common ground”.
But Reynolds vowed to proceed with the defamation claim, highlighting Lee’s findings were not binding, and she remained committed to fully vindicating her reputation.
The trio had travelled to Perth in March for mediation before Justice Marcus Solomon, amid fears about the human cost of yet another trial.
The trial is expected to run until mid-September.
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