Wagatha Christie: Vardy must pay Rooney at least £1.4m in legal costs, judge rules

A judge has ordered Rebekah Vardy to pay Coleen Rooney at least £1.4m in legal costs after the latter won the high-profile Wagatha Christie libel suit against her.

A specialist costs court was told on Tuesday that Mrs Vardy had agreed to pay almost £1.2m to Mrs Rooney after unsuccessfully suing her at the High Court in 2022.

But the judge decided she should pay more.

The high-profile court case took place after Mrs Rooney accused Mrs Vardy on social media in 2019 of leaking her private information to the press.

Mrs Vardy, wife of Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, unsuccessfully tried to sue Mrs Rooney in a libel battle that captivated some areas of the public and was later dramatised for TV.

After Mrs Vardy lost the battle, the judge ordered her to pay 90% of Mrs Rooney's costs, including an initial payment of £800,000.

On Tuesday, the specialist costs court heard Mrs Vardy had agreed to pay £1.19m of Mrs Rooney's legal bill.

It also heard Mrs Rooney was asking for a further £315,000 in "assessment costs".

Costs Judge Mark Whalan said it was "reasonable and proportionate" for Mrs Vardy to pay £212,266 of Mrs Rooney's assessment costs, inclusive of VAT but before interest, on top of the £1.19m settlement, totalling at least £1.4m.

The judge said that he was "generally happy" that the outcome was a "commercially satisfactory conclusion for both sides", but that there had been "extraordinary expenditure of costs" by the parties.

He said: "I do mean it when I say that I hope that this is the end of a long and unhappy road."

Read more:
Five things we learn from Rooney's Wagatha Christie documentary
The 'Wagatha Christie' libel case explained

In her written submissions, Mrs Vardy's barrister, Juliet Wells, had said Mrs Rooney's original £1.8m legal bill was "substandard" and included costs "of briefing the press" and others to which she had "no entitlement".

She claimed the bill could have been settled sooner if Mrs Rooney had "engaged more constructively".

Ms Wells said Mrs Vardy had offered to settle the legal bill for £1.1m, excluding interest and assessment costs, in August 2024, which was rejected "out of hand".

She said: "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.

"By contrast, Mrs Rooney's tone when it came to settlement negotiations was intransigent and frequently belligerent."

Robin Dunne, for Mrs Rooney, said in written submissions that Mrs Vardy had been "drip feeding" settlement offers.

He said Mrs Rooney's lawyers had to complete "additional work" as "lurid headlines arising from briefings from Mrs Vardy's camp dominated the press in the days before and during the hearings" in the case.

He said: "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 wife and girlfriend (WAG) of an England star - said that she had worked out who had been leaking stories about her to the press.

(c) Sky News 2025: Wagatha Christie: Vardy must pay Rooney at least £1.4m in legal costs, judge rules