\n<\/p>\n
David Sharaz has been ordered to pay $92,000 for social media posts the Western Australian supreme court found were defamatory against former defence minister Linda Reynolds.<\/p>\n
Sharaz, a former journalist and Higgins\u2019 now-husband, has also been found jointly responsible for another defamatory tweet to which Higgins responded, according to the court\u2019s orders.<\/p>\n
Higgins was ordered to pay $135,000 plus interest in the court\u2019s judgment in August in her trial against Reynolds. The ruling means both are now jointly liable for the single payout.<\/p>\n
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Justice Paul Tottle said Sharaz was also liable for Reynolds\u2019 legal costs on an indemnity basis. The total will be determined at a later date but is expected to exceed $500,000.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe defamatory publications were indefensible. A settlement offer should have been made. At the very least an offer to make an apology should have been made,\u201d Tottle\u2019s judgment said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was nothing about the defendant\u2019s conduct of the proceedings which would otherwise make it unjust to make an indemnity costs order against him.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Brittany Higgins\u2019 legal team filed an appeal notice against the court\u2019s orders in August that she pay $341,000 and 80% of legal costs to Reynolds, her former boss.<\/p>\n
Tottle had ruled Reynolds\u2019 reputation was damaged by Higgins\u2019 response to Sharaz\u2019s tweet.<\/p>\n
Higgins\u2019 legal team, however, had successfully defended a third social media post \u2013 also found to be defamatory \u2013 as honest opinion, fair comment and qualified privilege.<\/p>\n
Reynolds was unable to prove Higgins and Sharaz had concocted a conspiracy to publicly release the details of Higgins\u2019s alleged rape with the \u201csole or predominant purpose\u201d of destroying the former senator\u2019s reputation, Tottle\u2019s judgment said.<\/p>\n
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Sign up to Breaking News Australia<\/span><\/p>\n Get the most important news as it breaks<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n The court ruled that Higgins pay $315,000 in damages with an additional $26,109.25 in interest. Earlier this month, the court made a separate ruling on additional costs, ordering Higgins to pay 80% of Reynolds\u2019 legal costs for the five-week defamation trial.<\/p>\n It\u2019s expected the total legal bill will surpass $1m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" David Sharaz has been ordered to pay $92,000 for social media posts the Western Australian supreme court found were defamatory against former defence minister Linda Reynolds. Sharaz, a former journalist and Higgins\u2019 now-husband, has also been found jointly responsible for another defamatory tweet to which Higgins responded, according to the court\u2019s orders. Higgins was ordered<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22365,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[346,13719,160,999,4718,13723,13720,13721,175,3274,957,1040,11746,13722,11739],"class_list":{"0":"post-22364","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-brittany","10":"tag-court","11":"tag-david","12":"tag-defamation","13":"tag-defamed","14":"tag-higgins","15":"tag-husband","16":"tag-law","17":"tag-linda","18":"tag-orders","19":"tag-pay","20":"tag-reynolds","21":"tag-sharaz","22":"tag-tweet"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}