Rebekah Vardy has suffered another High Court defeat in the Wagatha Christie saga after she accused rival Coleen Rooney’s lawyers of misconduct.
The two footballers’ wives are at loggerheads over the cost of their blockbuster libel trial when Vardy was exposed as a serial leaker of stories to the press.
The six-year dispute began when Rooney took to Instagram to reveal the result of her detective work, discovering Vardy had been leaking private information about her to journalists.
Vardy sued, claiming she had been falsely accused and her public reputation had been wrecked. But a judge ultimately concluded Rooney – dubbed ‘Wagatha Christie’ – had been right all along.
The two WAGs are still fighting over costs from the trial, and a High Court judge earlier rejected Vardy’s claims that Rooney’s lawyers had misled the court so that it amounted to misconduct.
Vardy appealed that decision last month, claiming the actions of the lawyers constituted “serious misconduct” while Rooney’s lawyers claimed the challenge was “misconceived”.
In a ruling on Thursday, High Court judge Mr Justice Cavanagh dismissed the appeal.
He said: “The appeal must fail on the basis that the judge was entitled to reach the conclusion that he came to.”
The final determination of the costs battle is due later this year.
In this skirmish, Vardy’s team said it was wrong of Rooney’s side to minimise their own costs while attacking her level of spending.
Jamie Carpenter KC, for Vardy, said Rooney “very substantially understated” her legal costs by around 40% in her budget, known as a “precedent H”, in 2021.
He said: “At all times throughout the costs budgeting process, Mrs Rooney concealed from Mrs Vardy and the court that the incurred costs in her precedents H were much less than her true incurred costs.”
He continued: “Although the costs judge was critical of Mrs Rooney’s lawyers for their lack of transparency, he held ‘on balance’ and ‘only just’ that there was no misconduct. It is respectfully submitted that he was wrong to do so.”
Mr Carpenter said a “proportionate sanction” for the alleged misconduct would be to limit the amount of Mrs Rooney’s legal costs up to August 2021 to be paid by Mrs Vardy to £220,955.07.
Vardy, the wife of Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, was ordered to pay 90 per cent of Rooney’s costs after losing the libel trial, with an order to pay an initial £800,000.
Rooney’s claimed legal bill is £1,833,906.89 – more than three times her “agreed costs budget of £540,779.07”, which Mr Carpenter said was “disproportionate”.
He continued that the earlier “understatement” of some costs was “improper and unreasonable” and “involved knowingly misleading Mrs Vardy and the court”, meaning it should be reduced.
Robin Dunne, representing Mrs Rooney at the previous hearing, said the argument that the amount owed should be reduced was “misconceived” and that the budget was “not designed to be an accurate or binding representation” of her overall legal costs.
Senior Costs Judge Andrew Gordon-Saker, who made the original decision, found Rooney’s lawyers had not committed serious misconduct, but “only just”
He said that while there was a “failure to be transparent”, it was not “sufficiently unreasonable or improper” to constitute misconduct.
Mr Justice Cavanagh said: “In my view, the Judge was entitled to criticise the Defendant’s legal advisers for an error of judgment in failing to make clear the basis upon which they had set out their incurred costs in Precedent H, in circumstances in which they had decided to mount an all-out attack on the Claimant’s incurred costs.”
But he concluded that the judge was “not persuaded that (Vardy) had proved that (Rooney’s) legal advisers had deliberately misled the Court”, and he was “entitled to make the evaluative judgment that this did not amount to unreasonable or improper behaviour, especially as he was so well-placed to form a view about practice in relation to costs.”
