The Wagatha Christie libel trial between Rebekah Vardy and Coleen Rooney appeared to have concluded on Tuesday, more than five years after a viral social media post sparked the row.
Ms Vardy took Ms Rooney to the High Court, arguing she had caused “very serious damage to her reputation” with an October 2019 post alleging Ms Vardy's Instagram account had leaked information about her to The Sun newspaper.
Following a seven-day trial in July 2022, Mrs Justice Steyn ruled in favour of Mrs Rooney, finding it was “likely” that Ms Vardy's agent, Caroline Watt, leaked information to The Sun and that Ms Vardy knew about and facilitated the conduct and “actively” participated in it.
The couple then fought a long legal battle over costs that lasted almost three years and probably reached its climax on Tuesday when a specialist costs tribunal announced that Ms Vardy had agreed to pay almost £1.2m of Ms Rooney's legal costs, with the judge also ordering her to pay an additional £212,000.
The row began in October 2019, when Ms Rooney publicly alleged that Ms Vardy's account was the source of three stories with false details that she posted on her personal Instagram account: about a trip to Mexico for a “gender selection” procedure, about her plans to return to TV and about the basement of her home flooding.
Ms Rooney wrote: “I have saved and screenshotted all the original stories which clearly show that they were only viewed by one person.
“This is… a story by Rebecca Vardy.”
The case first came to court in November 2020, with the judge finding that Ms Rooney's post “clearly identified” Ms Vardy as “guilty of a serious and systematic breach of trust”.
On the first day of the trial at London's Royal Courts of Justice in May 2022, Hugh Tomlinson QC, for Ms Vardy, argued the TV presenter should have brought a libel action to “protect her reputation”.
In written submissions, David Sherborne, acting for Ms Rooney, said: “In short, the plaintiff is a person who secretly provided, or attempted to provide, to the press personal information he held about a number of people in the football or other celebrity world, not just the defendant, without their consent.”
Sourse: breakingnews.ie
