Taylor Auerbach sues Seven for defamation
Taylor Auerbach, the former producer on Seven’s Spotlight program who gave explosive evidence during Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation case, is suing the network for defamation over comments made after his surprise appearance in the witness box.
Auerbach filed Federal Court defamation proceedings on Friday, publicly available records show.
Former Seven network Spotlight producer Taylor Auerbach outside the Federal Court last year.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos
It follows a concerns notice – a necessary precondition to filing a defamation suit – sent by his lawyers last year. Auerbach has alleged his former employer accused him of giving false evidence in the Lehrmann case.
The Federal Court has yet to release documents in the case.
Auerbach’s evidence in the Lehrmann case was relevant to the former Liberal staffer’s credibility.
Federal Court Justice Michael Lee ultimately dismissed Lehrmann’s lawsuit against Network Ten and journalist Lisa Wilkinson after he concluded on the balance of probabilities that Lehrmann had raped his former colleague Brittany Higgins in Parliament House in 2019.
In his judgment on the Lehrmann case, Lee said Auerbach gave evidence during the trial that he “became Mr Lehrmann’s ‘babysitter’ or ‘minder’ as the Seven Network worked to secure an exclusive interview with Mr Lehrmann”.
“At some stage, it appears Mr Auerbach was discomforted in being placed in this role, but he nonetheless performed it, sometimes, it appears, ardently. I assume that Mr Lehrmann thought any joint activities with Mr Auerbach would be kept private,” Lee said.
While Lee did not make detailed findings about Auerbach’s evidence, he said it was “fair to conclude that Mr Lehrmann was less than candid in his account of the extent of the benefits he received prior to, and exchange for, his bargain to participate in giving exclusive interviews to the Seven Network”.
“It is fair to remark that the evidence reveals that some of the pre-compact inducements and consideration flowing in the direction of one contractual counterparty was of an unorthodox and undocumented kind,” Lee said.
This appears to be a reference to Auerbach’s evidence that Seven reimbursed Lehrmann for the cost of cocaine and sex workers.
During the defamation case, the Federal Court also heard that Seven spent about $100,000 paying Lehrmann’s rent for a year to April 2024 under an exclusive interview deal.
Lee said Auerbach “laid the allegations on thick against a variety of persons”, including “his erstwhile work colleagues”, but those claims were largely irrelevant to the case.
Auerbach claimed that Spotlight’s then-executive producer, Mark Llewellyn, was present when Lehrmann leaked confidential information from his criminal case, namely, messages between Higgins and Sydney Morning Herald columnist and author Peter FitzSimons, Wilkinson’s husband.
Lee said that “the inescapable conclusion is that Mr Lehrmann provided access to Mr Llewellyn to take [photos of the messages] … and thus wrongly provided him with access to the information” in the text messages.
Lehrmann’s “representations and evidence to the contrary were false to his knowledge on a serious matter, and this conclusion fortifies my assessment as to his general credit”, Lee said.
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