Rebekah Vardy ordered to pay Coleen Rooney further £100,000 after latest Wagatha Christie court battle

9 October 2024, 13:26 | Updated: 9 October 2024, 13:54

Rebekah Vardy has been ordered to pay Coleen Rooney a further £100,000 following their bombshell Wagatha Christie libel battle.

Mrs Vardy sued Mrs Rooney for libel but lost the High Court legal action in 2022.

Mrs Rooney had accused Mrs Vardy of leaking her private information to the press, with Wednesday marking the fifth anniversary of the viral social media post at the heart of the dispute.

Following the ruling in July 2022, Mrs Justice Steyn ordered Mrs Vardy to pay an initial £800,000, with barristers for the pair appearing in court in a dispute over legal costs on Wednesday.

At the end of the hearing, which began on Monday, Senior Costs Judge Andrew Gordon-Saker ordered Mrs Vardy to pay a further £100,000 to Mrs Rooney within 21 days.

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."

Judge Gordon-Saker said the cash must be paid by 2025.

He said: "The parties need to get on with this and put it behind them.

"Realistically, it (the line-by-line assessment) is probably going to be next year, hopefully early next year."

Mrs Vardy's friends have said she intends to "keep fighting" given how far she has come in the case.

"This is a major part of the hearing and Becky isn’t giving this up without a fight," they told the Sun.

They added: "She is going in swinging and her lawyer will be appealing the conduct ruling.

"Becky has come this far and will keep fighting."

In 2019, Mrs Rooney, the wife of former Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney, accused Mrs Vardy of leaking her private information to the press on social media, which Mrs Justice Steyn found in July 2022 was "substantially true".

The judge later ordered Mrs Vardy, the wife of Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, to pay 90% of Mrs Rooney's costs, including an initial payment of £800,000.

But the latest hearing in London was told that Mrs Rooney's claimed legal bill - £1,833,906.89 - was more than three times her "agreed costs budget of £540,779.07", which Mr Carpenter said was "disproportionate".

He continued that the earlier "understatement" of some costs was "improper and unreasonable" and "involved knowingly misleading Mrs Vardy and the court".