Rebekah Vardy has agreed to pay almost £1.2 million of Coleen Rooney’s legal costs following their Wagatha Christie court case.
In 2019 Coleen, 39, accused Rebekah Vardy, 43, of leaking fake stories about her private life to the press.
After months of detective work and a ‘sting operation’, she shared the infamous post which declared: ‘It’s…. Rebekah Vardy’s account.’
The wife of Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy vehemently denied the claims and went on to sue Coleen for libel.
However, in 2022 a High Court judge found Coleen’s post to be ‘substantially true’.
Nearly three years on Rebekah has agreed to pay Coleen’s legal costs that racked up during the proceedings.
In an order from October 2022, the judge ruled that Vardy should pay 90% of Rooney’s costs.
A specialist costs court had previously been told Coleen, the wife of former England striker Wayne Rooney, ran up a legal bill totalling more than £1.8 million after she successfully defended Rebekah’s High Court claim.
In written submissions for a hearing on Tuesday, Rebekah’s barrister, Juliet Wells, said that Coleen’s total legal bill of £1,833,906.89 ‘has now been settled at £1,190,000, being c.£1,125,000 plus interest of c.£65.000’.
She went on to explain that Coleen is now claiming ‘assessment costs’ of more than £300,000, which she described as ‘grossly disproportionate’ and said it should instead be capped at ‘no more than £100,000’.
Judge Mark Whalan said he was ‘pleased’ that the two sides had come to a ‘commercial accommodation’.
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He is now set to determine the full amount of the assessment costs.
Neither Coleen or Rebekah attended the remote hearing.
When sharing her first post about her suspicions surrounding Rebekah, Coleen claimed her account was the source behind three stories in The Sun newspaper featuring fake details she had posted on her private Instagram profile – featuring her travelling to Mexico for a ‘gender selection’ procedure, her planning 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 Rebekah’s former agent Caroline Watt had passed information to The Sun and that she ‘knew of and condoned this behaviour.’
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