Lisa Wilkinson is being charged an eye-watering $11,000 a day for a high-profile lawyer following her speech at the Logies.
Channel 10 has hired Australian Bar Association president Dr Matthew Collins QC for The Project host after her speech caused significant delays to the Brittany Higgins case, which was due to start this week.The case has now been postponed to October.
Dr Collins is famous for winning high-profile cases – one of them being Rebel Wilson’s against Bauer Media, as well as YouTuber Jordan Shanks against former NSW deputy premier John Barilaro.
The lawyer says it’s possible that Wilkinson could be charged with contempt of court, and admitted she should have known better.
“It’s certainly possible that the authorities will be looking at the speech that she made to the Logies and assessing that speech against the standard which applies in this branch of the law,” he said on Sunrise.
“That standard is, did anything that she do have a tendency to interfere with the administration of justice?
“You would hope that whenever the media is contemplating running a story about a serious criminal trial which is about to begin, they would be attune to the potential risks.
“The mainstream media understands the risk inhering with talking about cases which are about to go to trial, particularly serious high-profile cases.”
Wilkinson was already slammed for her comments last week by Chief Justice Lucy McCallum after rescheduling the case.
It comes as Channel 10 warns publications of their criticism of Wilkinson and are not ruling out legal action for any harm that is caused.
“This reporting is now causing significant harm and we ask these organisations to cease this harassment to allow Lisa the best opportunity to give her evidence in court and to enable the trial to go ahead in a fair and timely manner,” a spokesperson for the network said.
“We are closely monitoring all coverage of this issue and Lisa and Network 10 reserve their rights in respect of any future defamation claims.”
Images: Nine/Seven
This article first appeared on OverSixty.