The long-running legal feud between Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy has inched closer to its end, with Vardy agreeing to pay almost £1.2m of Rooney’s legal costs.
But the high-profile Wagatha Christie libel battle is not yet finished, a judge has been told, with Vardy still resisting payment of a further £300,000.
Rooney, the wife of the former England striker Wayne Rooney, claimed to have run up a legal bill totalling more than £1.8m after she accused Vardy, the wife of the striker Jamie Vardy, of leaking her private information to the press on social media in 2019. A judge found the claim was “substantially true”.
In written submissions for a hearing on Tuesday, Vardy’s barrister, Juliet Wells, said that Rooney’s total legal bill of £1,833,906.89 “has now been settled at £1,190,000, being c £1,125,000 plus interest of c £65,000”.
This week’s hearing had been expected to last nine days after Jamie Carpenter KC, for Vardy, said in a written submission that the bill had “a ‘kitchen sink’ approach” and included “over £120,000 of costs to which Mrs Rooney has no entitlement”.
He said this included costs for a lawyer staying “at the Nobu hotel, incurring substantial dinner and drinks charges as well as minibar charges”.
Robin Dunne, for Rooney, said in court: “[The solicitor] did not book the Nobu hotel. He booked a modest hotel but on the first night of staying there did not have any working wifi or shower.
“He was offered to stay at the Nobu by the defendant’s agent, who has a preferential rate.”
Dunne said that the food and minibar tab ran up to £225 but said the minibar tab “ran to £7, and ran to two bottles of water”.
In written submissions, he said: “It sits ill in Mrs Vardy’s mouth to now claim that Mrs Rooney’s costs, a great deal of which were caused directly by her conduct, are unreasonable.”
The two sides have now come to a “commercial agreement”, leaving just Rooney’s claim for “assessment costs” to be decided. Wells has said these costs should be capped at “no more than £100,000”.
The full amount of the assessment costs will be determined at the hearing before the costs judge Mark Whalan, who said he was “pleased” that the two sides had come to a “commercial accommodation” on the main sum.
Neither Vardy nor Rooney attended the remote hearing.
