A decide has ordered Rebekah Vardy to pay Coleen Rooney a minimum of £1.4m in authorized prices after the latter received the high-profile Wagatha Christie libel swimsuit towards her.
A specialist prices courtroom was informed on Tuesday that Mrs Vardy had agreed to pay virtually £1.2m to Mrs Rooney after unsuccessfully suing her on the Excessive Courtroom in 2022.
However the decide determined she ought to pay extra.
The high-profile courtroom case befell after Mrs Rooney accused Mrs Vardy on social media in 2019 of leaking her personal info to the press.
Mrs Vardy, spouse of Leicester Metropolis striker Jamie Vardy, unsuccessfully tried to sue Mrs Rooney in a libel battle that captivated some areas of the general public and was later dramatised for TV.
After Mrs Vardy misplaced the battle, the decide ordered her to pay 90% of Mrs Rooney’s prices, together with an preliminary fee of £800,000.
On Tuesday, the specialist prices courtroom heard Mrs Vardy had agreed to pay £1.19m of Mrs Rooney’s authorized invoice.
It additionally heard Mrs Rooney was asking for an additional £315,000 in “assessment costs”.
Prices Decide Mark Whalan stated it was “reasonable and proportionate” for Mrs Vardy to pay £212,266 of Mrs Rooney’s evaluation prices, inclusive of VAT however earlier than curiosity, on high of the £1.19m settlement, totalling a minimum of £1.4m.
The decide stated that he was “generally happy” that the end result was a “commercially satisfactory conclusion for both sides”, however that there had been “extraordinary expenditure of costs” by the events.
He stated: “I do mean it when I say that I hope that this is the end of a long and unhappy road.”
In her written submissions, Mrs Vardy’s barrister, Juliet Wells, had stated Mrs Rooney’s authentic £1.8m authorized invoice was “substandard” and included prices “of briefing the press” and others to which she had “no entitlement”.
She claimed the invoice may have been settled sooner if Mrs Rooney had “engaged more constructively”.
Ms Wells stated Mrs Vardy had supplied to settle the authorized invoice for £1.1m, excluding curiosity and evaluation prices, in August 2024, which was rejected “out of hand”.
She stated: “Mrs Vardy went to significant lengths to negotiate the bill despite being hamstrung by a lack of information and cooperation from Mrs Rooney’s camp.
“In contrast, Mrs Rooney’s tone when it got here to settlement negotiations was intransigent and incessantly belligerent.”
Robin Dunne, for Mrs Rooney, stated in written submissions that Mrs Vardy had been “drip feeding” settlement presents.
He stated Mrs Rooney’s legal professionals needed to full “additional work” as “lurid headlines arising from briefings from Mrs Vardy’s camp dominated the press in the days before and during the hearings” within the case.
He stated: “There will rarely be a case where it can be said with greater force that Mrs Vardy is the author of her own misfortune.”
The row was nicknamed Wagatha Christie after Mrs Rooney – a former spouse and girlfriend (WAG) of an England star – stated that she had labored out who had been leaking tales about her to the press.
