The latest round of Rebekah Vardy’s libel battle against Coleen Rooney over allegedly leaking stories to the media is set to be heard by the High Court.
Mrs Rooney, 35, accused Mrs Vardy, 39, of leaking “false stories” about her private life in October 2019 after carrying out a months-long “sting operation” which saw her dubbed “Wagatha Christie”.
The wife of former England star Wayne Rooney publicly claimed her fellow footballer’s wife shared fake stories she had posted on her personal Instagram account with the newspaper.
Mrs Vardy, who is married to Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, denies the accusations and is suing Mrs Rooney for libel.
On Wednesday, a preliminary hearing will be held to deal with the timetable of the case and any disputes over the parties’ legal costs.
During a previous hearing in March, Mrs Rooney’s barrister John Samson asked the court to “reject the claimant’s cost budget and ask them to review it because, in the words of my lay client, it is grotesque”.
At the time, Mrs Vardy’s barrister Sara Mansoori said Mrs Vardy’s overall budget was “£897,000, the estimated costs of which are £465,842.
“This compares to Mrs Rooney’s estimated costs in her cost budget of £402,312.”
However, these estimated costs are likely to have changed after Mrs Vardy applied to have part of Mrs Rooney’s defence thrown out.
In a judgment in July, Mrs Justice Steyn threw out parts of Mrs Rooney’s defence but kept some aspects that Mrs Vardy had applied to strike out.
This included an allegation that Mrs Vardy was leaking details about the libel case itself to The Sun.
However, Mrs Justice Steyn said the alleged close relationship between Mrs Vardy and the newspaper was “one of the building blocks” of Mrs Rooney’s inferential case.
Mrs Vardy’s lawyers had argued that removing the parts of Mrs Rooney’s defence would save £200,000 in Mrs Vardy’s legal costs and reduce the length of the trial by three to four days.
However, Mrs Rooney’s lawyers previously said the request was a tactical move as parts of the defence would “undermine (Mrs Vardy’s) case as well as embarrass her”.
The remote hearing on Wednesday is due to start at 2pm.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article