Rebekah Vardy agrees to pay nearly £1.2million of Coleen Rooney's legal costs

Daily Mirror

06-05-2025

Rebekah Vardy has been ordered to pay almost £1.2million of Coleen Rooney 's legal costs following their Wagatha Christie case. The former I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! star had attempted to sue Rooney following her now infamous social media post in 2019.
Coleen, the wife of former footballer Wayne took to social media to reveal that she had secretly been plotting a sting operation after a string of stories shared on her private social media had been leaked to the media. The Liverpudlian narrowed down accounts with access to her posts in order to discover which account was leaking the information.
In 2019, she took to social media to reveal: "It was..... Rebekah Vardy's account," after blocking her followers from seeing her Instagram Stories, which included a fake story that she was heading to Mexico for gender selection, as well as eyeing up a stint on Strictly Come Dancing.
Rebekah, 43, has strongly denied the allegations and implying that her Instagram account had been hacked. Rebekah later launched a defamation case against Rooney for her social media post which she claimed had defamed her. Now, a hearing at The Royal Courts of Justice on Tuesday heard that Rebekah must pay almost £1.2million.
A specialist costs court has previously been told that Mrs Rooney, the wife of former England striker Wayne Rooney, ran up a legal bill totalling more than £1.8 million after she successfully defended Mrs Vardy's High Court claim in 2022.
In written submissions for a hearing on Tuesday, Mrs Vardy's barrister, Juliet Wells, said that Mrs 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 Mrs Rooney is now claiming 'assessment costs' of more than £300,000, which she described as 'grossly disproportionate' and should be capped at 'no more than £100,000'.
The full amount of the assessment costs will be determined at the hearing before Costs Judge Mark Whalan, who said he was 'pleased' that the two sides had come to a 'commercial accommodation'.
Neither Mrs Vardy nor Mrs Rooney attended the remote hearing.
At a preliminary High Court hearing on November 19, 2020, Mr Justice Warby found that Coleen had used defamatory words about Rebekah.
On July 29, 2022, Mrs Justice Steyn ruled in favour of Coleen and said that Vardy had passed information about Coleen to the media. Rebekah had initially faced legal costs of approximately £3 million and had been ordered to pay 90 percent of Coleen's costs.
In October last year, Rebekah's barristers claimed to a judge in a hearing that Coleen and her legal representatives had committed "serious misconduct" by understating some of her costs in order to "attack the other party's costs." A judge ruled that no misconduct had been committed.
Rebekah later decided to appeal the decision, with Coleen's legal team opposing the appeal and describing it as "misconceived." In April, Mr Justice Cavanagh dismissed the appeal. He said: "The appeal must fail on the basis that the judge was entitled to reach the conclusion that he came to."
In written submissions filed in April by Rebekah's representative, Jamie Carpenter KC, claimed that Coleen had "very substantially understated" her legal costs by around 40 per cent in her budget, which is known as "precedent H," in 2021. Carpenter KC said: "At all times throughout the costs budgeting process, Mrs Rooney concealed from Mrs Vardy and the court that the incurred costs in her precedents H were much less than her true incurred costs."
He went on to add: "Although the costs judge was critical of Mrs Rooney's lawyers for their lack of transparency, he held 'on balance' and 'only just' that there was no misconduct. It is respectfully submitted that he was wrong to do so."
Carpenter added that a "proportionate sanction" for the alleged misconduct would be to limit the amount of Coleen's legal costs up to August 2021, to be paid by Rebekah to £220,955.07. Despite Rebekah strongly denying leaking any information from Coleen's private Instagram to the press, a ruling by Mrs Justice Steyn in July 2022 ruled Coleen's accusations to be "substantially true."
Rebekah was then ordered to pay 90 per cent of Coleen's legal costs, including a payment of £800,000. A hearing in October last year heard that Coleen's legal bill totalled £1,833,906.89 – which was said to be three times the "agreed costs budget of £540,779.07. Rebekah's legal representative argued that this was "disproportionate."
Senior Costs Judge, Andrew Gordon-Saker found "on balance and, I have to say, only just" that Coleen's legal team hadn't committed any wrongdoing and it would not be an "appropriate case" to reduce the fees that Rebekah has to pay. He said that there was a "failure to be transparent" but it was not "sufficiently unreasonable or improper" to constitute misconduct.