Rebekah Vardy must pay Coleen Rooney at least £1.4 million in legal costs following their high-profile 'Wagatha Christie' libel battle, a judge in the UK has said.
The two women had been in dispute over costs since Mrs Vardy unsuccessfully sued Mrs Rooney at the High Court in London in 2022.
A specialist costs court was told earlier on Tuesday that Mrs Vardy had agreed to pay £1,190,000 of Mrs Rooney's legal bill and that Mrs Rooney was also asking for a further £315,000 in "assessment costs".
Costs Judge Mark Whalan said that it was "reasonable and proportionate" for Mrs Vardy to pay £212,266.20 of Mrs Rooney's assessment costs, inclusive of VAT but before interest, on top of the £1.19 million settlement, totalling at least £1,402,266.20.
Mrs Rooney must also pay Mrs Vardy a total of £135,097.50 in costs under the terms of court orders from 2024, which will be set off against what Mrs Vardy must pay.
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 both 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 Mrs Vardy nor Mrs Rooney attended the remote hearing, with Judge Whalan stating that the two "can both part to put this matter behind them".
A specialist costs court was previously told that Mrs Rooney, the wife of former England striker Wayne Rooney, ran up a legal bill totalling more than £1.8 million after she successfully defended Mrs Vardy's High Court claim in 2022.
In written submissions for the hearing on Tuesday, Mrs Vardy's barrister, Juliet Wells, said that Mrs 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".
Ms Wells continued that Mrs Rooney was now claiming "assessment costs" of more than £300,000, which she described as "grossly disproportionate". She said they should be capped at "no more than £100,000".
Lawyers for Mrs Rooney said in written submissions that Mrs Vardy, the wife of footballer Jamie Vardy, was "the author of her own misfortune" and that she should "reflect upon her approach".
In the viral social media post in October 2019 at the heart of the libel claim, Mrs Rooney said she had carried out a months-long "sting operation" and accused Mrs Vardy of leaking information about her private life to the press.
Mrs Rooney publicly claimed Mrs Vardy's account was the source behind three stories in The Sun newspaper featuring fake details she had posted on her private Instagram profile – her travelling to Mexico for a "gender selection" procedure, her planning to return to TV, and a basement flooding at her home.
After the high-profile trial, Mrs Justice Steyn ruled in Mrs Rooney's favour, finding it was "likely" that Mrs Vardy's agent, Caroline Watt, had passed information to The Sun and that Mrs Vardy "knew of and condoned this behaviour" and had "actively" engaged.
Source: Press Association
