Rebekah Vardy's Coleen Rooney costs rise to £1.4m as judge forces her to pay £212k more

WAG has been dealt yet another blow in her self-created legal drama as a judge rules she must pay at least £1.4 million in legal costs following their

It's almost three years since the wife of outgoing Leicester City footballer Jamie Vardy unsuccessfully sued Coleen at the High Court yet the matter is still not over for the rival WAGs. The fresh blow for Rebekah comes as her husband becomes a free agent and without a football club, with it

A specialist costs court was told earlier on Tuesday that Rebekah had agreed to pay £1,190,000 of Coleen’s legal bill, and that Coleen was asking for a further £315,000 in “assessment costs”.

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Costs Judge Mark Whalan said that it was “reasonable and proportionate” for Rebekah to pay £212,266.20 of Coleen’s assessment costs, inclusive of VAT but before interest, on top of the £1.19m settlement, totalling at least £1,402,266.20.

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.”

Neither Rebekah or ... Get Me Out of Here! star Coleen, the wife of former England striker , attended the remote hearing, with Judge Whalan stating that the two “can both part to put this matter behind them”.

Rebekah’s barrister Juliet Wells told the hearing earlier on Tuesday that her client had agreed to pay £1.19m of Coleen’s legal bill, including VAT, which comprised around £1.12m in costs and around £65,000 in interest.

The court previously heard that Coleen had originally claimed a legal bill of £1,833,906.89, which Ms Wells said in written submissions was “substandard”. Ms Wells added that the further £315,000 claimed was “grossly disproportionate” and should be capped at £100,000, telling the court that Coleen had “taken a kitchen sink approach to costs”.

Robin Dunne, for Coleen, told the court that it “sits slightly ill in the mouth for Mrs Vardy to make criticisms of Mrs Rooney”. In written submissions, he said that the £315,000 figure “is higher than would have been the case had Rebekah approached these costs proceedings reasonably”.

He continued: “If Mrs Vardy now wishes that the sum claimed were lower, she need only reflect upon her approach and conduct throughout.”

Judge Whalan said that he was “pleased” that both sides could come to a “commercial accommodation” following a “difficult and high-profile case”, but that it had come after “enormous time, expenditure and grief”.

He said some of the assessment costs claimed by Coleen were “a little eyebrow-raising” and “unreasonably high and disproportionate”. He continued that the parties had been “stuck in a rut of being a few percentage points apart” on the final settlement sum since last November, adding: “This is the definition of bad litigation over the past six months as far as the claimant (Mrs Vardy) is concerned.”

In the viral social media post in October 2019 at the heart of the libel claim, Coleen said she had carried out a months-long “sting operation” and accused Rebekah of leaking information about her private life to the press.

Coleen publicly claimed Rebekah’s account was the source behind three stories in The Sun newspaper featuring fake details she had posted on her private profile – her travelling to Mexico for a “gender selection” procedure, her planning to return to TV and the basement flooding at her home.

After the high-profile trial, Mrs Justice Steyn ruled in Coleen’s favour, finding it was “likely” that Rebekah’s agent, Caroline Watt, had passed information to The Sun and that Rebekah “knew of and condoned this behaviour” and had “actively” engaged.

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