Court in the Act: Bruce Lehrmann’s explosive defamation case against Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson

It’s a case that sent shockwaves around Australia and has captured the imagination of the nation for almost three years.

And the bombshells have kept on coming in the latest instalment — a defamation trial in Sydney’s Federal court this week.

It’s a complex he said, she said case. And the job of the judge is to get to the bottom of the matter, according to specialist defamation and media lawyer Nick Stagg, co-founder and principal of law firm Steedman Stagg.

It began in 2021, when The Project aired an interview with Brittany Higgins, a young parliamentary staffer who alleged she had been raped by a colleague in Parliament House.

Her alleged rapist was not named, but according to him, and later his high-powered and highly paid legal team, anyone who knew him could put the clues together and come up with his name.

Bruce Lehrmann.

The allegations set off a chain of events that had a seismic impact at the highest level of politics, the Liberal Party and the law.

A criminal prosecution of Mr Lehrmann went ahead in Canberra, but fell apart in spectacular fashion last year.

And now, it’s Mr Lehrmann making the allegations — that Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson defamed him in the most serious of ways.

On this week’s Court in the Act podcast, Stagg walks legal affairs editor Tim Clarke through the first week of this explosive trial.