Wagatha Christie: Coleen Rooney reveals for first time exactly how much Rebekah Vardy legal bill cost her
After a three-year row with Rebekah Vardy, Coleen Rooney has assessed the extent of her bills and is said to have paid a staggering amount of cash for the legal battle.
Coleen Rooney has claimed she ran up a legal bill totalling more than €2.14m (£1.8m) from her high-profile Wagatha Christie libel battle with Rebekah Vardy, the High Court has been told.
Rebekah Vardy, the wife of Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, lost the legal action in July 2022 after she sued Coleen Rooney. The legal row started when the wife of former Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney, accused Rebekah of leaking her private information to the press on social media, which Mrs Justice Steyn found was "substantially true."
Back in October, 2022, Rebekah was thus sentenced to pay 90% of Coleen’s legal costs, with an initial €950,000 (£800,000) then ordered to be paid. Both of the women's solicitors have since returned to court in London to settle on the amount needing to be paid, as Rebekah's representatives claimed Rooney’s legal bill totalled €2,185,219.26 (£1,833, 906.89).
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In written submissions revealed this Monday, October 7, 2024, Jamie Carpenter KC, who was representing Rebekah Vardy, said that this included costs for a lawyer staying "at the Nobu Hotel, incurring substantial dinner and drinks charges as well as mini bar charges."
"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", he added.
Jamie Carpenter continued and said the bill had been "drawn without sufficient care" and had "a ‘kitchen sink’ approach." To top it all off, it included "over £120,000 of costs to which Mrs Rooney has no entitlement", according to the solicitor. David Sherborne, Coleen Rooney's barrister was also accused of charging "total fees over the course of the proceedings of £497,850."
The three-year long libel battle began when Coleen started suspecting that posts from her private Instagram account had been leaked. This then led her to carry out a long "sting operation" and accused Rebekah Vardy of leaking information about her private life to the press. Another WAG fallout for Rebekah, who has been at the centre of multiple rows in the past.
Coleen publicly claimed Rebekah’s account was the source behind three stories in The Sun newspaper featuring fake details she had posted on her private Instagram profile – which included her travelling to Mexico for a "gender selection" procedure, her plans 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 Mrs Vardy’s agent, Caroline Watt, had passed information to the tabloid and that she "knew of and condoned this behaviour."
The judge added that Mrs 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." The hearing, which was not attended by either Coleen or Rebekah this Monday, will conclude this Wednesday, October 9, 2024.
This comes after a source close to Rebekah said: "they have been trying to pick her pockets because they think they can get away with it. They underestimated their costs and are over-billing her. From the costs of experts to legal fees, the figures are ludicrous. They’ve taken a kitchen sink approach and are trying to get as much out of her as they can." The final defamation bill is more than triple the €640,000 (£540,000) that mother-of-five Becky, 42, had initially budgeted for.
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