Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy's Wagatha Christie continue new fight

The Wagatha Christie case, involving Rebekah Vardy and Coleen Rooney, is due to be heard again in court over legal costs.

Vardy, 42, lost her high-profile defamation case against media star Rooney, 38, in July 2022 when Judge Steyn ruled that Rooney's viral social media post accusing Vardy of leaking her private information to the press was “substantially true”.

In an October 2022 ruling, the judge ruled that Vardy must pay 90% of Rooney's costs.

Rooney, the wife of former Manchester United star Wayne Rooney, had to pay total costs of more than £2 million, of which £350,000 had already been accumulated before the trial in May.

Vardy, who is married to Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, had to pay £800,000 of the bill in November this year.

However, this was not the total amount spent on the case and the case will be referred back to the High Court in London where it will be heard before a specialist costs judge.

These judges estimate the costs and expenses incurred in civil litigation and determine how much the winning parties can recover. They can reduce costs if necessary or if they are deemed unreasonable.

Tuesday's hearing before Senior Costs Judge Andrew Gordon-Saker is scheduled to begin at 10:30 a.m.

In the social media post that went viral in October 2019 and is at the heart of the libel suit, Rooney said she had been running a “sting operation” for months and accused Ms Vardy of leaking information about her private life to the press.

Rooney publicly claimed that Vardy's account was the source behind three articles in British newspaper The Sun about false statements she had posted on her personal Instagram profile about her trip to Mexico for a “gender selection” procedure, her plans to return to television and the flooding in the basement of her home.

After the high-profile trial, Judge Steyn ruled in Rooney's favour, finding that it was “likely” that Vardy's former agent Caroline Watt had passed information to The Sun and that she “knew of and condoned this conduct”.

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The judge added that Vardy had “actively” intervened by “directing Ms Watt to the private Instagram account, sending her screenshots of Ms Rooney's posts, drawing attention to points of potential interest to the press and answering additional questions posed by the press about Ms Watt.”

Coleen addressed her viral tweet in an interview with British Vogue last year, saying she didn't write it in advance in her notes app, preferring the old-fashioned method instead.

“I like pen and paper – actually pencil and eraser so I can erase it,” she said. “So I started writing down what I wanted to say and the next morning I published it. That was the start of something I never expected.”

The case inspired a Disney Plus documentary, a West End show and, of course, plenty of online memes.

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