Rebekah Vardy ordered to pay £1.5m towards Coleen Rooney’s legal costs over Wagatha Christie trial

Rebekah Vardy has been ordered to pay £1.5m towards Coleen Rooney’s legal costs following their Wagatha Christie libel trial.

In a ruling issued on Tuesday, Judge Justice Steyn said Vardy must pay 90% of Rooney’s costs, and that an £800,000 down payment must be paid by 4pm on 15 November.

In the case dubbed “war of the wags”, Rooney incurred eyewatering costs of more than £2 million. However, £350,000 of those costs had already been racked up ahead of the trial, so were removed to produce a final figure of £1,667,860.

The final costs ruling will be confirmed once Rooney submits her final total costs bill.

Although the exact figure of Vardy’s own costs is not known, it’s likely to be a similar amount to Rooney’s, stretching into the millions.

Vardy has also been ordered to pay part of the costs of seven journalists who were potential witnesses but did not actually give evidence in the week-long trial. Rooney has also been ordered to pay a portion of their costs.

Vardy lost her libel case against Rooney in July.

The case centred around a social media post published by Rooney on 9 October 2019, in which she accused Vardy of leaking stories about her to the press.

The post led to Rooney being dubbed “Wagatha Christie” on social media – a nod to the world-famous British crime novelist Agatha Christie.

Vardy, who had denied being responsible for leaking Rooney’s personal information, announced she would be taking Rooney to court in June 2020, with the trial finally reaching the High Court in May this year.

However, the case didn’t go Vardy’s way, with the court finding the essence of Rooney’s social media post was “substantially true” – that’s to say Vardy was responsible for leaking Rooney’s private information to the press.

In her ruling, Judge Steyn described Rooney’s evidence as “honest and reliable”, but labelled Vardy’s evidence “manifestly inconsistent… evasive or implausible”.

In the order made public on Tuesday, the same judge said Vardy had “deliberately deleted or destroyed evidence”, calling such behaviour “outside the ordinary and reasonable conduct of proceedings”.

For this reason she said costs would be assessed on an indemnity rather than a standard basis – a decision which is more favourable to Mrs Rooney in terms of the amount of her legal bill she can recover.

However, the judge also explained her decision to only order 90% of Rooney’s costs to be paid by Vardy, citing Rooney’s “weak” allegation that Vardy was one of the people behind The Sun’s Secret Wag gossip column, and Rooney’s unsuccessful public interest defence.