Rebakah Vardy agrees to pay almost £1.2m of Coleen Rooney’s Wagatha legal costs

Rebekah Vardy has agreed to pay almost £1.2 million of Coleen Rooney’s legal costs following their high-profile Wagatha Christie libel battle, a judge has been told.

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 additional “assessment costs” of more than £300,000, which she described as “grossly disproportionate” and should be capped at “no more than £100,000”.

Lawyers for Mrs Rooney said in written submissions that Mrs Vardy was “the author of her own misfortune” and that she should “reflect upon her approach”.

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 an agreement after a “hard-fought” legal battle.

The judge also said that the agreed figure was “inclusive of VAT”, adding: “I commend both sides for reaching that accommodation.”

Tuesday’s hearing is expected to deal with matters including lawyers’ hourly rates and other costs.

In her written submissions, Ms Wells said that Mrs Rooney’s original £1.8m legal bill was “substandard” and included costs “of briefing the press” and others to which she had “no entitlement”.

She continued that the bill could have been settled sooner if Mrs Rooney had “engaged more constructively”.

She said that Mrs Vardy had offered to settle the legal bill for £1.1 million, excluding interest and assessment costs, in August 2024, which was rejected “out of hand”.

She said: “Mrs Vardy went to significant lengths to negotiate the bill despite being hamstrung by a lack of information and cooperation from Mrs Rooney’s camp.

“By contrast, Mrs Rooney’s tone when it came to settlement negotiations was intransigent and frequently belligerent.”

Robin Dunne, for Mrs Rooney, said in written submissions that Mrs Vardy had been “drip feeding” settlement offers.

He continued that Mrs Rooney’s lawyers had to complete “additional work” as “lurid headlines arising from briefings from Mrs Vardy’s camp dominated the press in the days before and during the hearings” in the case.

He said: “There will rarely be a case where it can be said with greater force that Mrs Vardy is the author of her own misfortune.

“She took every conceivable point in this assessment, put Mrs Rooney to very significant work on each and every aspect of the proceedings, raised highly technical and potentially damaging issues and failed to make any reasonable offers for the bill until the 11th hour.

“Her conduct has caused Mrs Rooney to incur £315,000 of assessment costs. This is higher than would have been the case had Mrs Vardy approached these costs proceedings reasonably.

“If Mrs Vardy now wishes that the sum claimed were lower, she need only reflect upon her approach and conduct throughout.”

In the viral social media post in October 2019 at the heart of the libel claim, Mrs 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 Mrs Vardy “knew of and condoned this behaviour” and had “actively” engaged.

Neither Mrs Vardy nor Mrs Rooney attended Tuesday’s remote hearing.