Rebekah Vardy launches appeal bid against Wagatha Christie costs ruling

A judge ruled in October that Mrs Rooney’s lawyers had not committed misconduct in a row over legal fees.

Coleen Rooney (left) and Rebekah Vardy during their High Court libel battle (Yui Mok/PA) (PA Archive)

Rebekah Vardy has launched an appeal bid against a ruling on costs in the latest stage of her Wagatha Christie libel battle against Coleen Rooney, her lawyers have confirmed.

Barristers for the women returned to the High Court in October in a dispute over how much Mrs Vardy should pay in costs after she lost the legal action in 2022.

In a three-day hearing, lawyers for Mrs Vardy – the wife of Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy – argued that the sum should be reduced due to what they said was “serious misconduct” by Mrs Rooney’s legal team, who allegedly “deliberately understated” her costs.

But Senior Costs Judge Andrew Gordon-Saker found “on balance and, I have to say, only just”, that Mrs Rooney’s legal team had not committed wrongdoing, and therefore it was “not an appropriate case” to reduce the amount of money that Mrs Vardy should pay.

Court documents show that Mrs Vardy has launched an appeal bid, which her lawyers Kingsley Napley confirmed related to the misconduct ruling.

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.

Mrs Vardy sued her for libel, but Mrs Justice Steyn found in July 2022 that the allegation was “substantially true”.

The judge later ordered Mrs Vardy to pay 90% of Mrs Rooney’s costs, including an initial payment of £800,000.

The previous 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 Jamie Carpenter KC, for Mrs Vardy, said was “disproportionate”.

He claimed that Mrs Rooney’s legal team had committed misconduct by understating some of her costs so she could “use the apparent difference in incurred costs thereby created to attack the other party’s costs”, which was “knowingly misleading”.

Robin Dunne, for Mrs Rooney, said that “there has been no misconduct” and that it was “illogical to say that we misled anyone”.

He added that the argument that the amount owed should be reduced was “misconceived” and that the budget was “not designed to be an accurate or binding representation” of her overall legal costs.

Judge Gordon-Saker ruled that while there was a “failure to be transparent”, it was not “sufficiently unreasonable or improper” to constitute misconduct.

He ordered Mrs Vardy to pay Mrs Rooney a further £100,000 ahead of the full amount owed being decided at a later date.