Rebekah Vardy ordered to pay £1.5 million towards Coleen Rooney’s legal bills after their ‘Wagatha Christie’ libel showdown

Rebekah Vardy has been ordered to pay £1.5 million towards Coleen Rooney’s legal costs following their ‘Wagatha Christie’ High Court libel battle.

The wife of Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy was accused of deliberately deleting WhatsApp messages central to the case as it was suggested her agent also intentionally dropped her phone in the North Sea.

A High Court judge recently dismissed her evidence as ‘evasive or implausible’.

Mrs. Vardy and her footballer husband were left with the bill after Mrs. Justice Steyn ruled in favour of Mrs Rooney in a judgment that said swathes of her evidence given under oath had been ‘manifestly inconsistent’, ‘not credible’ and needed to be treated with ‘very considerable caution’.

She lost her high-profile libel claim against Mrs. Rooney, 36, in July when Mrs. Justice Steyn ruled that Mrs. Rooney’s viral social media post accusing Mrs. Vardy of leaking her private information to the press was ‘substantially true’.

It followed a viral social media post where Coleen had revealed she had put false stories on her Instagram page. These fake tales then emerged in The Sun newspaper.

Because she had changed her settings so only one user could see it she felt confident to make the famous declaration ‘it’s….Rebekah Vardy’s account’.

In an order made public on Tuesday, the judge ruled that Mrs Vardy should pay 90% of Mrs Rooney’s costs.

Mrs. Rooney incurred total costs of more than £2 million, but £350,000 of those had already been racked up before the trial in May, so those were removed to produce a final figure of £1,667,860.

Mrs. Vardy was ordered to pay £800,000 of the costs bill by 4pm on November 15.

Mrs Justice Steyn said Mrs Rooney has not yet produced a final total costs bill, and therefore the figures in the order were taken from a breakdown of her costs given in a statement from her solicitor.

Vardy will also have to pay costs incurred by seven journalists who were potential witnesses but did not give evidence – apart from a portion of their costs which Mrs Rooney has already been ordered to pay.

The judge ruled on various issues relating to Mrs Rooney’s costs after receiving written legal arguments on behalf of both women.

Mrs Justice Steyn said there were certain issues which arose during the week-long trial which justified the reduction of 10% in the amount Mrs Vardy has to pay, including Mrs Rooney’s allegation that Mrs Vardy was one of the people behind The Sun’s ‘Secret Wag’ gossip column.

The judge said in the court order: ‘In particular, the weak allegation that the claimant was the Secret Wag added considerably to the work by the claimant’s representatives, the concession in respect of serious harm was made late, and the (Mrs Rooney’s) public interest defence was unsuccessful.

‘However, given the defendant’s success on the defence of truth which was at the heart of this claim, and the degree to which there was overlap between the issues, I consider that the appropriate reduction is 10%.’

Mrs Vardy had argued for a reduction to 80% while Mrs Rooney contended there should be no reduction at all.

The final figure of costs Mrs Vardy has to pay may be reduced further if she does not agree to pay the total incurred by Mrs Rooney and, at a later date, a court considers some of those costs to have been unreasonable.

The total amount of Mrs. Vardy’s legal costs is not known but is expected to be of a similar level to those incurred by Mrs. Rooney.

Paul Lunt, partner and head of litigation at law firm Brabners, who represented Coleen Rooney, said: ‘The High Court has today decided that Rebekah Vardy must pay Coleen Rooney’s legal costs on an indemnity basis – the highest basis that the court could order.

‘The reasoning given for this decision is that there was a finding at trial that Rebekah Vardy had deliberately deleted or destroyed evidence.

‘That behaviour falls outside the ordinary and reasonable conduct expected of a party in legal proceedings.

‘This followed a separate finding regarding the loss of evidence that was in the possession of Rebekah Vardy’s former agent, Caroline Watt.

‘Coleen’s pursuit of that evidence is a major reason why her legal costs increased substantially from the original estimates given to the court long before the start of the trial.

‘Rebekah Vardy has been ordered to pay £800,000 to Coleen Rooney by November 15 as an interim payment until the final total she must pay is either agreed or decided upon by the court.

‘Naturally, Rebekah will also be responsible for her own legal costs of bringing her failed libel action against Coleen.

‘Today’s decision also makes Rebekah liable to pay for legal costs incurred by certain journalists from News UK, publishers of The Sun newspaper, following her unsuccessful efforts to involve them in the proceedings.’