Coleen Rooney might have turned “Wagatha Christie” more than five years ago now, but her lawyers’ battle with Rebekah Vardy continues.

The Liverpudlian famously wrote a social media post that revealed she’d carried out a ‘”sting operation” to learn who was leaking gossip about her and concluded the “false stories” she had concocted were in the press thanks to Rebekah Vardy’s Instagram account. Rebekah furiously denied the allegation, launching a libel case that took the WAGs all the way to the High Court.

With fans hooked to every minute of proceedings, the 2022 trial didn’t go Rebekah‘s way when Coleen‘s legal team managed to uncover messages between the WAG and her agent Caroline Watt, despite Caroline claiming she had dropped her phone into the North Sea on a family holiday. After a post from Mrs Rooney saying someone she trusted was leaking stories, the agent wrote to her client: “It wasn’t someone she trusted, it was me.”

This led the judge to state that it was “likely” Rebekah’s agent had passed information to The Sun newspaper. “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,” said Mrs Justice Steyn.

Rebekah, the wife of footballer Jamie Vardy, was instructed to pay 90 per cent of her WAG nemesis’s fees, with an initial payment of £800,000. Paul Lunt, partner and head of litigation at law firm Brabners which represented Coleen, said: “The High Court has today decided that Rebekah Vardy must pay Coleen Rooney’s legal costs on an indemnity basis – the highest basis that the court could order.

“The reasoning given for this decision is that there was a finding at trial that Rebekah Vardy had deliberately deleted or destroyed evidence. That behaviour falls outside the ordinary and reasonable conduct expected of a party in legal proceedings.”

The WAG continues to challenge the costs claims and today, her lawyers asked the court to order Coleen’s team to hand over “privileged” documents, and details about her claim for VAT, with Wayne Rooney’s wife’s lawyers saying this was a “fishing expedition”.

In October, the court heard Coleen’s side had calculated her legal bill in the three-year long libel battle as topping £1.8 million. Rebekah’s lawyer Jamie Carpenter KC called this a “kitchen sink” approach, criticising costs for a lawyer staying “at the Nobu Hotel, incurring substantial dinner and drinks charges as well as mini bar charges” and saying there were more than £120,000 costs “of which Mrs Rooney has no entitlement”. It is thought Rebekah had estimated her total bill would be around £500,000.

But Robin Dunne, acting for Coleen, argued it was “outrageous” to accuse them of being dishonest and slammed Rebekah’s “deplorable conduct”, adding that the legal costs would have been lower if “she conducted this litigation appropriately.”

Senior costs judge Andrew Gordon-Saker ordered Mrs Vardy to pay a further £100,000 to Mrs Rooney within 21 days, with a full amount to be paid at a later date. He said: “I think there is some scope for a further payment on account so the defendant (Mrs Rooney) is not kept out of her costs, and I think that should be no more than £100,000.”

Coleen branded the trial “horrible” in an interview with British Vogue last year. She suggested she could not forgive Mrs Vardy for her libel claim, but said “the relief was everything” to win.

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