Rebekah Vardy said she had "no knowledge" her agent's phone fell into the North Sea, a court has heard.
In an October 2019 Twitter post, Coleen Rooney accused Mrs Vardy of leaking stories about her private life after carrying out a months-long "sting operation". The 36-year-old claimed Mrs Vardy had shared fake stories she had posted on her personal Instagram account with The S*n newspaper.
Mrs Vardy, who is married to Leicester City striker Jamie, denies the accusations and is suing Mrs Rooney for libel. The High Court has previously heard Mrs Vardy's agent and friend Caroline Watt’s phone fell into the sea after a boat she was on hit a wave before further information could be extracted from it in August 2021.
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Mrs Vardy’s barrister Hugh Tomlinson QC said in his written arguments: “Mrs Vardy has no personal knowledge as to this incident. All she knows is what has been said by Ms Watt.
“It has not been suggested that Mrs Vardy had any involvement with this and it cannot possibly be relied on as evidence of wrongdoing by Mrs Vardy.”
Mr Tomlinson said the suggestion that Mrs Vardy and her agent were involved in a “conspiracy” and “campaign of deletion” in relation to evidence in the case is “completely baseless”. Mr Tomlinson told the court that it had not been suggested “that Mrs Vardy was anywhere near the North Sea at the time” nor that she “knew anything about it”.
He said there was a “credible, ordinary, boring explanation” behind media files on Mrs Vardy’s WhatsApp no longer being available. He added: “It’s a very well-known and common feature in everyone’s life that from time to time electronic documents are lost for all kinds of reasons.
“This is something that happens to us all that some times documents are lost”. Mr Tomlinson claimed the issue had affected Mrs Rooney too, telling the court that her PR’s email account was deleted in February 2020 and as a result “a crucial email about one of the articles has gone”.
Representing Mrs Rooney, David Sherborne described what he called a series of "most improbable events" that had affected the disclosure of evidence in the case from Mrs Vardy and those around her. This included Caroline Watt's "poor unfortunate phone" falling into the North Sea "within days" of the court ordering that, even though she was not a party to proceedings, it should be searched for disclosure.
He said: "What terrible luck."
