Rebekah Vardy has called full-time on her six-year Wagatha Christie legal tussle with former pal Coleen Rooney after being ordered to pick up a mega court bill.
The 43-year-old mother-of-five said she was ‘respectfully disappointed’ to have failed in her final bid to have Mrs Rooney’s £1.85 million court costs reduced.
The pair had been locked in a bitter dispute after Mrs Rooney, wife of former England captain Wayne Rooney, claimed Mrs Vardy had leaked stories to the press.
A High Court judge today ruled that Mrs Rooney’s lawyers did not commit misconduct after being accused of ‘deliberately’ understating some of her costs in the high-profile showdown.
It means Mrs Vardy – who lost the libel case – now faces picking up 90 per cent of Mrs Rooney’s costs, reckoned to work out at about £1.6 million.
In a statement, a spokesman for Mrs Vardy – wife of veteran Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy – said: ‘We are … respectfully disappointed that… our appeal was not successful.
‘Now we just wish to move on and look to the future.
‘We will be making no further comment at this time.’
Rebekah Vardy, pictured on the French Alps in January 2024 holding a bottle of port – a picture she posted on her Instagram stories hours after today’s court defeat
Coleen Rooney, wearing a protective boot, carried out a ‘sting’ operation to detect who was leaking stories about her to the press
Mrs Vardy, pictured with former England striker husband Jamie Vardy, is now facing an eye-watering £1.6 million bill
Mrs Rooney, pictured with her husband Wayne Rooney outside the Royal Courts of Justice in July 2022, is said to have run up a £1.8 million legal bill
The Rooneys were reckoned to be worth around £134 million – ten times the Vardys’ estimated £15 million – back in 2022 when a High Court judge found in favour of Coleen.
Former England captain and Manchester United striker Wayne had recently called an end to a stellar playing career, was dipping his toes into management and punditry, and was said to be worth around £120 million.
The pair had a stream of properties worth tens of millions of pounds across Cheshire, the Caribbean and Florida, while Mrs Rooney built her own wealth through exercise DVDs and books, as well as a raft of sponsorship and media deals.
Mrs Vardy’s husband, another former England striker Jamie, was still playing football at the highest level with Leicester, and was said to be on around £160,000 a week.
He remains a Premier League player with the Foxes, although the club look destined to be relegated to the Championship next season.
Mrs Vardy developed her own career on the TV and showbiz circuit, and in 2017 appeared on I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! for an expected £100,000, the Mirror reported.
She appeared to put her latest crushing court defeat behind her today, posting a photograph of herself on Instagram enjoying a tipple during a skiing holiday.
She uploaded the image from a getaway on the slopes of the French Alps in January last year, holding a miniature bottle of port she previously described as ‘a ski essential’.
Rebekah and Jamie Vardy arrive at court in London in 2022
The post that started it all: Mrs Rooney accused Mrs Vardy’s social media account of leaking stories
Celebrity lawyer David Sherborne, right, represented Coleen Rooney – and has also appeared in court on behalf of the likes of Prince Harry
Mrs Vardy had challenged the ‘sheer magnitude of the costs’ claimed by Mrs Rooney from their 2022 case, which gripped the world.
Mrs Rooney was represented in court by high-profile barrister David Sherborne – who has acted on behalf of Prince Harry and Johnny Depp in recent years – while Mrs Vardy had enlisted the services of legal heavyweight Hugh Tomlinson.
A specialist costs judge last year ruled Mrs Rooney’s lawyers did not commit misconduct after they were accused by Mrs Vardy’s legal team of understating some of her costs.
Mrs Vardy appealed the decision last month, claiming it constituted ‘serious misconduct’, while Mrs Rooney’s lawyers claimed the challenge was ‘misconceived’.
But High Court judge Mr Justice Cavanagh today 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 a 38-page ruling, he found there was ‘no valid basis for challenging on appeal the judge’s conclusion’.
He said: ‘The court was not persuaded that the claimant had proved that the defendant’s legal advisers had deliberately misled the court, or the claimant, either by things said or things not said.
Coleen Rooney leaving the Royal Courts of Justice in 2022
Rebekah Vardy denied she was the source of the leaks
In a 38-page ruling, he found there was ‘no valid basis for challenging on appeal the judge’s conclusion’.
‘There had been a misjudgment in the form of a failure to be more transparent about the basis upon which the defendant’s figures for incurred costs had been prepared, but that was as far as it went.
‘The judge was entitled to make the evaluative judgment that this did not amount to unreasonable or improper behaviour, especially as he was so well-placed to form a view about practice in relation to costs.’
It is not yet known whether Mrs Vardy’s latest – and potentially final – appeal will incur any further costs.
Mrs Vardy lost the £3 million libel case after a judge ruled it was ‘substantially true’ that she had leaked Mrs Rooney’s private information to the press.
The judge ordered her to pay the vast majority of Mrs Rooney’s costs.
But Mrs Vardy wanted costs reduced to 50 per cent as it was alleged that Mrs Vardy was charging for a lawyer’s stay at a five-star Nobu Hotel.
Mrs Vardy’s reputation was left in tatters in 2022 after a High Court judge dismissed her evidence as ‘evasive or implausible’ and accused her of deliberately deleting WhatsApp messages central to the case.
Her agent was also accused of intentionally dropping her phone in the North Sea.
Mrs Vardy had sued over an accusation she had leaked details of Mrs Rooney’s private life to the press.
It came after Mrs Rooney – the 39-year-old mother-of-four and wife to former England captain and Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney – had staged an elaborate sting operation to find out who was passing on stories about her private life to The Sun.
The judge, Justice Karen Steyn, said in her ruling that Mrs Rooney had successfully proved her allegation was substantially true.
Mrs Rooney said in a statement after the ruling that she was ‘pleased’ the decision went in her favour but that she ‘never believed’ the case should have gone to court ‘at such expense in times of hardship for so many people when the money could have been far better spent helping others’.
The two women – both former contestants on ‘I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here!’ had been locked in a bitter legal dispute since 2019 after Mrs Rooney took to social media to accuse her fellow WAG Mrs Vardy of leaking stories to the press.
In a now infamous ‘reveal’ post that went viral on social media, Mrs Rooney wrote: ‘It’s……….. Rebekah Vardy’s account.’
The case was given the moniker in honour of the means Mrs Rooney took to deduce who the chief suspect was.
The High Court has found that Mrs Rooney’s social media post accusing her rival was ‘substantially true’ and that Mrs Vardy ‘knew of, condoned and was actively engaged’ in leaks to the media by her ex-agent Caroline Watt.
And in a damning assessment of Mrs Vardy’s evidence, the judge said ‘significant parts were not credible’ and at times her ‘evidence was manifestly inconsistent with the contemporaneous documentary evidence, evasive or implausible’. By contrast, the judge found that Coleen and her witnesses, including husband Wayne, ‘gave honest, reliable evidence.’
Mrs Justice Steyn also ruled that loss of WhatsApp messages between Mrs Vardy and Ms Watt was ‘deliberate rather than accidental’ – dismissing her agent’s claim that a phone fell into the North Sea when a ship hit a big wave.
In her ruling, the judge said it was ‘likely’ that Mrs Vardy’s agent at the time, Caroline Watt, ‘undertook the direct act’ of passing the information to The Sun.
But she added: ‘Nonetheless, the evidence … clearly shows, in my view, that Mrs Vardy knew of and condoned this behaviour, actively engaging in it by 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.
The judge added: ‘In my judgment, the conclusions that I have reached as to the extent to which the claimant engaged in disclosing to The Sun information to which she only had access as a permitted follower of an Instagram account which she knew, and Mrs Rooney repeatedly asserted, was private, suffice to show the single meaning is substantially true.’
But she added: ‘Nonetheless, the evidence … clearly shows, in my view, that Mrs Vardy knew of and condoned this behaviour, actively engaging in it by 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.
The case captivated millions who were left open-mouthed by the evidence including explosive and expletive-filled Whatsapp messages sent by Mrs Vardy as well as Mrs Rooney’s evidence about leaking false stories about her private life to find who was giving them to the tabloids and how her marriage almost fell apart after her husband Wayne was caught drink-driving with a party girl.
