Rebekah Vardy ordered to pay a further £100k to Coleen Rooney in latest Wagatha Christie twist

In the latest Wagatha Christie twist, Rebekah Vardy has been ordered to pay Coleen Rooney a further £100,000 following their high-profile libel battle.

The latest court appearance follows Mrs Rooney accusing Mrs Vardy of leaking her private information to the press on social media, with Wednesday marking five years since the viral social media post at the heart of the dispute.

The £100,000 is ahead of the full amount owed being decided.

Barristers for the two have appeared in court in a dispute over legal costs after Mrs Vardy lost her High Court claim against Mrs Rooney in 2022.

Mrs Vardy was later ordered to pay 90% of Mrs Rooney’s fees, with an initial payment of £800,000.

But at the end of the hearing, which began on Monday, senior costs judge Andrew Gordon-Saker ordered Mrs Vardy to pay a further £100,000 to Mrs Rooney within 21 days.

He said: “I think there is some scope for a further payment on account so the defendant (Mrs Rooney) is not kept out of her costs, and I think that should be no more than £100,000.”

The hearing, which neither woman attended, dealt with several preliminary issues before a full “line-by-line” assessment of costs takes place at a later date, which will decide the overall amount of money to be paid.

Judge Gordon-Saker said this could take place in early 2025, but added: “The parties need to get on with this and put it behind them.”

He said: “Realistically, it (the line-by-line assessment) is probably going to be next year, hopefully early next year.”

It comes the day after a judge rule Coleen Rooney’s lawyers did not commit misconduct after being accused of “knowingly misleading” Rebekah Vardy by “deliberately” understating her legal costs.

Jamie Carpenter KC, for Mrs Vardy, claimed in written submissions that Mrs Rooney and her legal team “deliberately understated” some of her costs so she could “use the apparent difference in incurred costs thereby created, to attack the other party’s costs”, which he claimed constituted “serious misconduct”.

This warranted a reduction in the amount that Mrs Vardy should pay, Mr Carpenter claimed.

Robin Dunne, for Mrs Rooney, said that “there has been no misconduct” and that it was “illogical to say that we misled anyone”.

In a ruling on Tuesday, Senior Costs Judge Andrew Gordon-Saker found “on balance and, I have to say, only just”, that Mrs Rooney’s legal team had not committed wrongdoing, and therefore it was “not an appropriate case” to reduce the amount of money that Mrs Vardy should pay.

He said that while there was a “failure to be transparent”, it was not “sufficiently unreasonable or improper” to constitute misconduct.