Following their High Court libel case over the “Wagatha Christie,” Rebekah Vardy will be forced to contribute £1.5 million to Coleen Rooney’s legal fees.
A High Court judge’s dismissal of the 40-year-old’s testimony as “evasive or improbable” has left her reputation in ruins, making it one of the worst own goals in British judicial history.
Vardy was charged with purposefully erasing crucial WhatsApp chats since it was implied that her agent also threw Vardy’s phone into the North Sea on purpose.
Mrs. Justice Steyn decided in favor of Mrs. Rooney in a decision that said portions of her sworn testimony had been “manifestly contradictory,” “not believable,” and needed to be handled with “very substantial care.” Mrs. Vardy and her footballer husband were left with the bill.
When Mrs. Justice Steyn determined that Mrs. Rooney’s widely shared social media post in which she claimed that Mrs. Vardy had leaked her private information to the press was “basically factual,” she lost her high-profile libel case against the 36-year-old.
The court decreed in a ruling made public on Tuesday that Mrs. Vardy is responsible for paying 90% of Mrs. Rooney’s fees.
More than £2 million in expenses were expended by Mrs. Rooney, but $350,000 of those expenses had already accrued before the May trial, so they were subtracted to arrive at the ultimate amount of £1,667,860.
Mrs. Vardy was instructed to pay £800,000 of the charges by November 15 at 4 p.m.
Aside from the share of their fees that Mrs. Rooney has already been ordered to pay, she will also be responsible for the expenditures paid by seven journalists who were possible witnesses but declined to testify.
Following receipt of written legal arguments on behalf of both ladies, the court made decisions about a number of matters pertaining to Mrs. Rooney’s fees.
Although the overall cost of Mrs. Vardy’s legal fees is unknown, it is anticipated that they will be comparable to Mrs. Rooney’s.
Rebekah Vardy must pay Coleen Rooney’s legal fees on an indemnity basis, which is the maximum basis the High Court may award, according to Paul Lunt, partner and head of litigation at the law firm Brabners, which represented Coleen Rooney.
Rebekah Vardy was found to have purposefully deleted or destroyed evidence over the course of the trial, which is the justification offered for this judgment.
That behavior deviates from what is customary and reasonable for a party to judicial proceedings.
This came after a separate determination that evidence belonging to Caroline Watt, Rebekah Vardy’s former agent, had been lost.
‘Coleen’s pursuit of such evidence is a key factor in why her legal expenses materially exceeded the initial projections made and submitted to the court well in advance of the trial.
Until the ultimate sum she must pay is either reached an agreement on or determined by the court, Rebecca Vardy has been ordered to pay Coleen Rooney £800,000.
Of course, Rebekah will also be liable for her own legal expenses associated with filing her unsuccessful libel suit against Coleen.
‘Today’s verdict also makes Rebekah accountable to pay for the legal expenses paid by several News UK journalists, proprietors of The Sun newspaper, as a result of her futile attempts to include them in the proceedings,’ the ruling reads.