Coleen Rooney claims libel battle with Rebekah Vardy cost her £1.8m

07 October 2024 , 14:50

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Coleen Rooney claims libel battle with Rebekah Vardy cost her £1.8m

Lawyers return to court in dispute over amount of legal costs to be paid from ‘Wagatha Christie’ case

Coleen Rooney has claimed she ran up a legal bill totalling more than £1.8m from her high-profile libel battle with Rebekah Vardy, the high court has been told.

Vardy, the wife of the Leicester City footballer Jamie Vardy, lost the legal action in July 2022 after she sued Rooney for libel in what became known as the “Wagatha Christie” case. 

In 2019, Rooney, the wife of the former Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney, accused Vardy of leaking her private information to the press on social media, which Mrs Justice Steyn found was “substantially true”. In October 2022, the judge ordered Vardy to pay 90% of Rooney’s legal costs.

The women’s lawyers have returned to court in London in a dispute over the amount to be paid, after lawyers for Vardy said Rooney’s claimed legal bill totalled £1,833,906.89.

In written submissions for a hearing on Monday, Jamie Carpenter KC, representing Vardy, said this included costs for a lawyer staying “at the Nobu Hotel, incurring substantial dinner and drinks charges as well as mini bar charges”.

He said: “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.

“The bill, drawn at 100% of the costs claimed … totals £1,833,906.89.”

Carpenter said the bill was “drawn without sufficient care” and had “a ‘kitchen sink’ approach”, and included “over £120,000 of costs to which Mrs Rooney has no entitlement”.

The hearing before Senior Costs Judge Gordon-Saker, which was not attended by Rooney or Vardy on Monday, will conclude on Wednesday.

Grace Cooper