Wagatha Christie dispute returns to court as Rebekah Vardy challenges Coleen Rooney's £1.8m legal costs
7 October 2024, 20:03 | Updated: 7 October 2024, 20:09
Rebekah Vardy has challenged the "sheer magnitude" of the legal costs claimed by Coleen Rooney from their 2022 libel trial as the so-called Wagatha Christie dispute returned to the High Court.
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Mrs Vardy lost the original case after a judge ruled it was "substantially true" that she had leaked Mrs Rooney's private information to the press.
The judge ordered her to pay 90% of Mrs Rooney's costs, which has reached more than £1.8m and included a stay at a luxury hotel for one of her lawyers, Mrs Vardy's barrister said.
Mrs Rooney's barrister argued these fees could have been lower if Mrs Vardy had "conducted this litigation appropriately".
The wife of ex-England footballer Wayne Rooney accused Mrs Vardy, the wife of Leicester City's Jamie Vardy, of leaking stories from her private Instagram account to The Sun newspaper.
Mrs Rooney was nicknamed Wagatha Christie in 2019 after saying she had conducted a sting operation to find out who the leak was.
She accused Mrs Vardy via a social media post which went viral as she concluded: "It's.... Rebekah Vardy's account."
Mrs Vardy then sued Mrs Rooney over the post but ultimately lost the legal action as the judge overseeing the case, Mrs Justice Steyn, found the post to be "substantially true".
He ordered Mrs Vardy to pay 90% of the legal costs of Mrs Rooney's, who after winning the case, said it should never have gone to court "when the money could have been far better spent helping others".
In the latest development, Mrs Vardy's lawyers say Mrs Rooney has claimed a legal bill totalling £1,833,906.89, including fees for a five-star hotel and swanky restaurant for a lawyer.
In written submissions for a hearing on Monday, Jamie Carpenter KC, who is representing Mrs Vardy, described a bill for a lawyer staying "at the Nobu Hotel, incurring substantial dinner and drinks charges as well as mini bar charges".
He said: "The costs dispute has been rendered particularly intractable by the sheer magnitude of the costs claimed by Mrs Rooney, in absolute terms and when compared to her agreed costs budget, the number of errors in the bill and the extraordinary nature of some of the costs claimed.
"The bill, drawn at 100% of the costs claimed... totals £1,833,906.89."
Mr Carpenter said the bill was "drawn without sufficient care" and had "a 'kitchen sink' approach", and included "over £120,000 of costs to which Mrs Rooney has no entitlement".
This comes after Mrs Rooney's lawyers challenged parts of Mrs Vardy's legal bill of around £325,000 earlier this year, of which 20% will have to be paid by Rooney.
They called Mrs Vardy's costs, which included payment for her trial barrister, Hugh Tomlinson KC, to work on Christmas Day "unreasonable and disproportionate".
Neither Rooney nor Vardy attended the hearing, which is being overseen by senior costs judge Andrew Gordon-Saker and is due to conclude on Wednesday.
