Page:Lehrmann v Network Ten Pty Limited (Trial Judgment).pdf/287

 1013 Mr Lehrmann points to the fact that neither of the respondents pleads that Mr Lehrmann had a bad reputation in general prior to the publication and that he was an ordinary young man just starting out in his career, not much known to anyone outside the circle of his direct acquaintances. But the Project programme had the effect of bringing Mr Lehrmann to the attention of a wide range of people who had never had much reason to know or care who he was (including some who did not know him at all), immediately ruining his reputation within that wider circle of people.

1014 It follows that the need for vindication in this case is very high, and not just because of the serious nature of the allegation but because of the national controversy that has aroused very strong feelings. An award of damages "sufficient to convince a bystander of the baselessness of the charge" in this context must be very substantial: Broome v Cassell & Co Ltd [1972] AC 1027 (at 1071 per Lord Hailsham of St Marylebone LC).

1015 Mr Lehrmann accepts some damage was caused to him by the antecedent publication of the Maiden article, the supervening criminal proceeding and the media attention following the charges being preferred on 7 August 2021 (T555.11–21). But the significance of the Maiden article to the causation of loss should not be overstated. The Project programme went to air that same night, so the article only had a head start of a couple of hours and both publications were co-ordinated with the respondents seeing the article as a means to "build the hype for us having the only interview with the woman at the centre of it all", with Mr Campbell previously commenting that it "solves our promo issue" (Ex R419; T1954.12). Moreover, the Project programme had greater impact because the broadcast was based around the interview with Ms Higgins, and it was the interview that "seared Ms Higgins' allegations into the national consciousness" with the "spectacle and pathos of seeing her tell her story on prime time television" making the case notorious. The Maiden article, it is said, had none of this colour and movement, and this substantially lessened its impact.

1016 Mr Lehrmann also accepts in broad terms that it is open to the Court to take into account the matters relied on by the respondents in "mitigation" and, more particularly, accepts "that it is open to the Court to make adverse findings about some of his conduct" and those findings, if they are made, "are to his discredit and are relevant to assessing the real damage caused to his reputation by the defamation". Lehrmann v Network Ten Pty Limited (Trial Judgment) [2024] FCA 369