Brittany Higgins bankrupted by former Liberal senator
The defunding of former political staffer Brittany Higgins by her former boss has brought the former politician one step closer to discovering where the former employee’s $2.4 million severance payout went.
Former Liberal senator Linda Reynolds launched bankruptcy proceedings in October after successfully suing Ms Higgins for libel.
Federal Court judge Michael Feutrill on Friday ordered the seizure of Ms Higgins’ assets under the Insolvency Act after a series of minor glitches and technical difficulties slowed the process.
The date of the bankruptcy process was pushed back to October 8.
“(The property) will be transferred to the bankruptcy trustee, who will take control of her affairs and deal with creditors in due course,” Ms Reynolds’ lawyer, Rachel Ross, told reporters outside the court in Perth.
Ms Reynolds’ high-profile smear victory over Ms Higgins concerned a series of social media posts that she believed had damaged the former defense secretary’s reputation.
Ms Reynolds was awarded $315,000 plus $26,109 in interest after the Supreme Court of Western Australia ruled in August that some of the posts were defamatory.
Ms Higgins was also ordered to pay 80 per cent of her former boss’s legal costs, estimated at more than $1 million.
Ms Reynolds’ lawyer, Martin Bennett, has previously said bankruptcy would allow Ms Reynolds to find out how much of Ms Higgins’ government settlement is left while she tries to meet her legal costs for the libel case.
Ms Higgins apologized to Ms Reynolds after the former defense secretary emerged victorious in the pair’s five-week high-profile libel case.
Judge Paul Tottle found Ms Higgins’ social media posts contained a series of accusations.
These included that Ms. Reynolds launched a harassment campaign against Ms. Higgins, mishandled the rape allegation, and engaged in questionable behavior during Bruce Lehrmann’s criminal trial, which was annulled for rape.
The 360-page ruling set out factual findings about the incidents involving Ms Reynolds and Ms Higgins, including the alleged rape in 2019 and the years thereafter.
The ruling stated that Ms Higgins made 26 false or misleading statements in media interviews following the sexual assault allegation.
She claims that her former colleague Lehrmann raped her in the senator’s ministerial office.
A Federal Court judge overseeing Lehrmann’s libel case against Network Ten found that, on the balance of probabilities, Ms Higgins had been raped by her former colleague in the office.
Lehrmann lost an appeal against this finding but flagged off taking the case to the Supreme Court.
He denies the rape allegation, and the criminal trial was derailed by juror misconduct.
Ms. Higgins’ husband, David Sharaz, has also been served with a declaration of bankruptcy by Ms. Reynolds and is expected to declare bankruptcy as well.
He was also found to have insulted the former politician and was ordered to pay $85,000 in damages, plus interest and costs.
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