Rebekah Vardy has agreed to pay almost £1.2m of Coleen Rooney’s legal costs after the latter won the high-profile Wagatha Christie libel suit against her, a judge has been told.
A specialist costs court was previously told that Mrs Rooney, the wife of former England striker Wayne Rooney, ran up a legal bill totalling more than £1.8m after she successfully defended Mrs Vardy’s High Court claim in 2022.
The high-profile court case took place after Mrs Rooney accused Mrs Vardy on social media in 2019 of leaking her private information to the press.
Mrs Vardy, wife of Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, unsuccessfully tried to sue Mrs Rooney in a libel battle in 2022 that captivated some areas of the public and was later dramatised for TV.
After Mrs Vardy lost the battle, the judge ordered her to pay 90% of Mrs Rooney’s costs, including an initial payment of £800,000.
In written submissions for a hearing on Tuesday, Mrs Vardy’s barrister, Juliet Wells, said that Mrs Rooney’s total legal bill had now been settled at almost £1.2m.
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”.
In her written submissions, Ms Wells said 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 claimed the bill could have been settled sooner if Mrs Rooney had “engaged more constructively”.
Ms Wells said Mrs Vardy had offered to settle the legal bill for £1.1m, 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 said 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.”