Rooney ‘deliberately understated’ legal costs in Wagatha battle, court told

Coleen Rooney was “knowingly misleading” Rebekah Vardy by “deliberately” understating her legal costs during their high-profile Wagatha Christie legal battle, the High Court has been told.

Mrs Vardy sued Mrs Rooney for libel after Mrs Rooney accused her of leaking private information to the press on social media in 2019, but Mrs Justice Steyn ruled in July 2022 that the accusation was “substantially true”.

In October 2022, the judge ordered Mrs Vardy to pay 90% of Mrs Rooney’s legal costs, and their lawyers have returned to court in London in a dispute over how much should be paid.

Jamie Carpenter KC, for Mrs Vardy, told the court in written submissions that while Mrs Rooney’s total legal bill came to more than £1.8 million, she had previously “deliberately understated” some of her costs so she could “use the apparent difference in incurred costs thereby created, to attack the other party’s costs”.

In court on Monday, he said: “Even if acceptable to understate incurred costs, you have to say you have done that.

“You cannot keep that to yourself and then try to gain an advantage to say the other side’s costs are outrageous.

“It was intended to mislead and it did mislead.”

The court was told that Mrs Rooney’s claimed legal bill – £1,833,906.89 – was more than three times her “agreed costs budget of £540,779.07” and was “disproportionate”.

Mr Carpenter said that the earlier “understatement” of some costs was “improper and unreasonable” and amounted to “serious misconduct, which involved knowingly misleading Mrs Vardy and the court”.

He claimed that this should lead to a reduction in the amount of money to be paid by Mrs Vardy, adding: “There is no other way to construe it.”

Robin Dunne, for Mrs Rooney, said that the argument that the amount owed should be reduced was “misconceived” and that the budget was “not designed to be an accurate or binding representation” of her overall legal costs.

He added: “Mrs Vardy’s argument appears to arise from her frustration that her deplorable conduct in this litigation has led to the budgets becoming irrelevant.”

He continued: “There has been no misconduct here. Had Mrs Vardy conducted this matter in a reasonable fashion, Mrs Rooney would be confined to her budget and would have recovered no more absent good reason.”

In court, Mr Dunne said that it was “illogical to say that we misled anyone”.

In the viral social media post in October 2019 at the heart of the libel claim, Mrs Rooney, the wife of former Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney, said she had carried out a months-long “sting operation” and accused Mrs Vardy of leaking information about her private life to the press.

Mrs Rooney publicly claimed Mrs 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, Mrs Justice Steyn ruled in Mrs Rooney’s favour, finding it was “likely” that Mrs Vardy’s agent, Caroline Watt, had passed information to The Sun and that she “knew of and condoned this behaviour”.

The judge added that Mrs Vardy, the wife of Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, had “actively” engaged, “directing Ms Watt to the private Instagram account, sending her screenshots of Mrs Rooney’s posts, drawing attention to items of potential interest to the press and answering additional queries raised by the press via Ms Watt”.

Mr Carpenter said on Monday that some of Mrs Rooney’s legal costs were “extraordinary”, including money for a lawyer staying “at the Nobu Hotel, incurring substantial dinner and drinks charges as well as mini bar charges”.

He continued that Mrs Rooney’s barrister, David Sherborne, “charged total fees over the course of the proceedings of £497,850” and that the legal bill had “a ‘kitchen sink’ approach”, including “over £120,000 of costs to which Mrs Rooney has no entitlement”.

He said: “The costs dispute has been rendered particularly intractable by the sheer magnitude of the costs claimed by Mrs Rooney, in absolute terms and when compared to her agreed costs budget, the number of errors in the bill and the extraordinary nature of some of the costs claimed.”

Mr Dunne said Mrs Vardy’s argument “smacks, with the best will in the world, of desperation” and that the outcome of the court battle was “utterly devastating to her”.

He said: “It is probably the most ill-advised legal action since Oscar Wilde put pen to writ.”

In written submissions, he added: “It sits ill in Mrs Vardy’s mouth to now claim that Mrs Rooney’s costs, a great deal of which were caused directly by her conduct, are unreasonable.”

The hearing before Senior Costs Judge Andrew Gordon-Saker, which neither Mrs Rooney nor Mrs Vardy attended on Monday, is expected to conclude on Wednesday.