Rebekah Vardy has agreed to pay almost £1.4 million of Coleen Rooney’s legal costs following their Wagatha Christie court case.
In 2019 Coleen, 39, accused Rebekah Vardy, 43, of leaking fake stories about her private life to the press.
After months of detective work and a ‘sting operation’, she shared the infamous post which declared: ‘It’s…. Rebekah Vardy’s account.’
The wife of Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy vehemently denied the claims and went on to sue Coleen for libel.
However, in 2022 a High Court judge found Coleen’s post to be ‘substantially true’.
Nearly three years on Rebekah has agreed to pay Coleen’s legal costs that racked up during the proceedings.
In an order from October 2022, the judge ruled that Vardy should pay 90% of Rooney’s costs.
A specialist costs court had previously been told Coleen, the wife of former England striker Wayne Rooney, ran up a legal bill totalling more than £1.8 million after she successfully defended Rebekah’s High Court claim.
On Tuesday, the specialist costs court was told Rebekah had agreed to pay £1,190,000 of Coleen’s legal bill, and that Coleen was asking for a further £315,000 in ‘assessment costs’.
Costs Judge Mark Whalan said that it was ‘reasonable and proportionate’ for Rebekah to pay £212,266.20 of Coleen’s assessment costs, inclusive of VAT but before interest, on top of the £1.19m settlement, totalling at least £1,402,266.20.
The judge said that he was ‘generally happy’ that the outcome was a ‘commercially satisfactory conclusion for both sides’, but that there had been ‘extraordinary expenditure of costs by the parties.
‘I do mean it when I say that I hope that this is the end of a long and unhappy road,’ he said.
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He is now set to determine the full amount of the assessment costs.
Neither Coleen or Rebekah attended the remote hearing.
When sharing her first post about her suspicions surrounding Rebekah, Coleen claimed her account was the source behind three stories in The Sun newspaper featuring fake details she had posted on her private Instagram profile – featuring her travelling to Mexico for a ‘gender selection’ procedure, her planning to return to TV, and the basement flooding at her home.
Following the high-profile trial, Justice Steyn ruled in Coleen’s favour, finding it was ‘likely’ that Rebekah’s former agent Caroline Watt had passed information to The Sun and that she ‘knew of and condoned this behaviour.’
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