Rebekah Vardy and Coleen Rooney have taken the “Wagatha Christie” case back to court for a further hearing over soaring costs.
The libel case gained global attention after Mrs Rooney, who is married to former England captain Wayne Rooney, revealed on Instagram that she believed fellow WAG Mrs Vardy was leaking private information about her to the press.
In July 2022, Mrs Vardy, 42, lost her high-profile libel claim against Mrs Rooney, 38, when the court ruled the viral social media post “substantially true”.
Now, representatives of the friends-turned-foes returned to court on Tuesday to settle their affairs over Mrs Rooney’s costs.
In an order from October 2022, the judge ruled that Mrs Vardy should pay 90 percent of Mrs Rooney’s costs and was ordered to pay £800,000 of the bill that November.
Now, specialist costs judges are hearing claims regarding pre-trial costs that Mrs Rooney is set to pay Mrs Vardy.
Lawyers are challenging parts of a bill of around £325,000, of which 20 per cent will have to be paid by Mrs Rooney.
Appearing before a specialist cost judge, Robin Dunne, for Mrs Rooney, said that Mrs Vardy’s team had accrued “unreasonable and disproportionate” costs before the trial.
Mr Dunne said they were “significant applications”, adding that “we fully accept there needed to be work done”, but that Mrs Vardy’s bill for around eight weeks worth of work was “disproportionate”.
Mrs Vardy’s lawyers are opposing the bid to reduce the costs bill.
Jamie Carpenter KC, for Mrs Vardy, said there was “barely a day” when her lawyers were not working at that time.
The specialist costs court in London heard that Mrs Vardy’s trial barrister, Hugh Tomlinson KC, had “worked on the case on Christmas Day while he was on holiday”.
Mr Carpenter said that many of the lawyers worked Boxing Day and the bank holidays around Christmas on Mrs Vardy’s case.
He continued: “No one was costs building. This was work that absolutely had to be done and it was a huge amount of work.”
Specialist costs judges assess the costs and expenses incurred during the civil case and rule on how much successful parties can recover, and can reduce the costs if needed or if they are deemed to be unreasonable.
Mrs Rooney’s costs are expected to be considered at a hearing in October and neither woman appeared at the High Court on Tuesday for the first hearing.
In the viral social media post in October 2019 at the heart of the libel claim, Mrs Rooney said she had carried out a months-long “sting operation” to discover who had been leaking information to the press.
Ms Rooney says she spent five months attempting to work out who was sharing information about her and her family based on posts she had made on her personal social media page.
After sharing a series of “false” stories and using a process of elimination, Ms Rooney claims they were viewed by one Instagram account, belonging to Mrs Vardy.
Mrs Rooney publicly claimed Mrs Vardy’s 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.
Ms Vardy, then pregnant with her fifth child, denied the allegations and said various people had access to her Instagram over the years.
She claimed to be “so upset” by Ms Rooney’s accusation, later adding: “I thought she was my friend but she completely annihilated me.”
The public dispute makes headlines around the world, with the hashtag #WagathaChristie trending.
Following the high-profile trial, Mrs Justice Steyn ruled in Mrs Rooney’s favour, finding it was “likely” that Mrs Vardy’s former agent Caroline Watt had passed information to The Sun and that she “knew of and condoned this behaviour”.
The hearing before Senior Costs Judge Andrew Gordon-Saker is due to conclude on Wednesday.
