Rebekah Vardy has agreed to pay a substantial sum of nearly £1.2m towards Coleen Rooney’s legal costs, following the conclusion of their highly publicised “Wagatha Christie” libel case.
A specialist costs court had previously heard that Ms Rooney, wife of former England footballer Wayne Rooney, accrued legal fees exceeding £1.8m in successfully defending the claim brought against her by Ms Vardy in 2022.
In written submissions for a hearing on Tuesday, Ms Vardy’s barrister, Juliet Wells, said that Ms Rooney’s total legal bill of £1,833,906.89 “has now been settled at £1,190,000, being c.£1,125,000 plus interest of c.£65.000”.
Ms Wells continued that Ms Rooney is now claiming additional “assessment costs” of more than £300,000, which she described as “grossly disproportionate” and should be capped at “no more than £100,000”.
Lawyers for Ms Rooney said in written submissions that Ms Vardy was “the author of her own misfortune” and that she should “reflect upon her approach”.
The full amount of the assessment costs will be determined at the hearing before Judge Mark Whalan, who said he was “pleased” that the two sides had come to an agreement after a “hard-fought” legal battle.
The judge also said that the agreed figure was “inclusive of VAT”, adding: “I commend both sides for reaching that accommodation.”
Tuesday’s hearing is expected to deal with matters including lawyers’ hourly rates and other costs.
In her written submissions, Ms Wells said that Ms Rooney’s original £1.8m legal bill was “substandard” and included costs “of briefing the press” and others to which she had “no entitlement”.
She continued that the bill could have been settled sooner if Ms Rooney had “engaged more constructively”.
She said that Ms Vardy had offered to settle the legal bill for £1.1m, excluding interest and assessment costs, in August 2024, which was rejected “out of hand”.
She said: “Mrs Vardy went to significant lengths to negotiate the bill despite being hamstrung by a lack of information and cooperation from Mrs Rooney’s camp.
“By contrast, Mrs Rooney’s tone when it came to settlement negotiations was intransigent and frequently belligerent.”
Robin Dunne, for Ms Rooney, said in written submissions that Ms Vardy had been “drip feeding” settlement offers.
He continued that Ms Rooney’s lawyers had to complete “additional work” as “lurid headlines arising from briefings from Ms Vardy’s camp dominated the press in the days before and during the hearings” in the case.
He said: “There will rarely be a case where it can be said with greater force that Mrs Vardy is the author of her own misfortune.
“She took every conceivable point in this assessment, put Mrs Rooney to very significant work on each and every aspect of the proceedings, raised highly technical and potentially damaging issues and failed to make any reasonable offers for the bill until the 11th hour.
“Her conduct has caused Mrs Rooney to incur £315,000 of assessment costs. This is higher than would have been the case had Mrs Vardy approached these costs proceedings reasonably.
“If Mrs Vardy now wishes that the sum claimed were lower, she need only reflect upon her approach and conduct throughout.”
In the viral social media post in October 2019 at the heart of the libel claim, Ms Rooney said she had carried out a months-long “sting operation” and accused Ms Vardy of leaking information about her private life to the press.
Ms Rooney publicly claimed Ms Vardy’s account was the source behind three stories in The Sun newspaper featuring fake details she had posted on her private Instagram profile – her travelling to Mexico for a “gender selection” procedure, her planning to return to TV and the basement flooding at her home.
After the high-profile trial, Ms Justice Steyn ruled in Ms Rooney’s favour, finding it was “likely” that Ms Vardy’s agent, Caroline Watt, had passed information to The Sun and that Ms Vardy “knew of and condoned this behaviour” and had “actively” engaged.
Neither Ms Vardy nor Ms Rooney attended Tuesday’s remote hearing.
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