The judge has explained exactly why Rebekah Vardy lost her battle to sue Coleen Rooney for defamation.
Mrs Justice Steyn announced the ruling of the high profile Wagatha Christie trial today. In a viral social media post in October 2019, Mrs Rooney , 36, said she had carried out a "sting operation" and accused Ms Vardy of leaking "false stories" about her private life to the press.
Mrs Rooney publicly claimed Mrs Vardy's account was the source behind three fake stories she had posted on her private Instagram account.Mrs Vardy denied leaking the stories and sued her fellow footballer's wife for libel, while Mrs Rooney defended the claim on the basis her post was "substantially true".
READ MORE: Coleen Rooney wins Wagatha Christie court battle against Rebekah Vardy as verdict announced
David Sherborne, for Mrs Rooney, argued Mrs Vardy knew her agent Caroline Watt, who did not give evidence at the trial, was leaking stories to the press. The judge issued a verdict today to rule that Ms Vardy was party to the disclosure of Ms Rooney's Instagram posts to The S*n.
The judge added: "It is likely that Ms Watt undertook the direct act, in relation to each post, of passing the information to a journalist at The S*n. Nonetheless, the evidence analysed above clearly shows, in my view, that Ms Vardy knew of and condoned this behaviour, actively engaging in it by directing Ms Watt to the Private Instagram Account sending her screenshots of Ms Rooney’s posts, drawing attention to items of potential interest to the press, and answering additional queries raised by the press via Ms Watt.
"It is also likely that additional information from the Private Instagram Account was passed to the press by them. It is evident that information that was passed to the press would not necessarily be published (e.g. the Babysitter Post). On some occasions, information is likely to have been disclosed to assist the press with articles they were already writing without warranting an enquiry by the press or being obvious that information had been derived from the Private Instagram Account (e.g. information as to whether Ms Rooney had gone to Florida).
"Press enquiries would not necessarily be run past Ms Rooney (e.g. Mr Stretford’s evidence regarding the Car Crash enquiry) and, given the deletion of Ms Monk’s email account when she left the company, there may have been more press enquiries than are apparent in the evidence. Having regard to the evidence that is available, and my conclusions regarding the evidence which is missing, it is appropriate to draw an inference that Ms Vardy and Ms Watt together leaked more information from the Private Instagram Account over the course of 2017-2019 than that which is contained in the eight posts to which I have referred.
"In my judgment, the conclusions that I have reached as to the extent to which the claimant engaged in disclosing to The S*n information to which she only had access as a permitted follower of an Instagram account which she knew, and Ms Rooney repeatedly asserted, was private, suffice to show that the single meaning is substantially true. The information disclosed was not deeply confidential, and it can fairly be described as trivial, but it does not need to be confidential or important to meet the sting of the libel. It was information derived from private posts that Ms Rooney did not want made public.
"The Pyjamas Post, for example, was a photograph that Ms Rooney may well have been content to share publicly at a different point in time, but the timing of its disclosure revealed very personal information that she had chosen not to make public. I recognise, of course, that it can be said that the Gender Selection and Flooded Basement Posts were fabricated stories that Ms Rooney was keen to see published precisely because she wanted to catch the person responsible for leaking her information. This does not detract from the conclusion that the essential sting of the libel has been shown to be true."
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