The WAgatha Christie plot thickens – Rebekah Vardy has reportedly been instructed to pay a portion of Coleen Rooney’s legal fees.
Both WAGs are currently embroiled in an ongoing libel suit in the High Court, with the next part of the case taking place in the autumn.
Now, according to Mail Online, Vardy, 39, has been instructed to pay some of her rival’s legal fees, with a spokesman for Coleen saying: “Naturally Coleen and her legal team are pleased with the judge’s rulings and her award of costs.
“They mean that Rebekah will have to address these elements of Coleen’s defence, on oath, in open court.
“Coleen’s lawyers continue actively to gather statements and other evidence which will still further strengthen these crucial elements of Coleen’s defence.”
(Image: Getty Images)
A statement from Vardy’s representative read: “The Judge has struck out about 10 pages of material from Mrs Rooney’s defence as irrelevant or a waste of court time.
“Mrs Rooney has to re-plead the part of her public interest defence which was said by the Judge to be ‘impermissible’. This is now Mrs Rooney’s third attempt at a putting forward a defence to Mrs Vardy’s libel claim.
“She has been ordered to cover the costs of this exercise and Mrs Vardy’s costs of amending her Reply.”
Last week, the judge rejected Vardy’s request to remove parts of Rooney’s defence from the proceedings.
(Image: Getty Images)
The defence related to Vardy’s alleged dealings with The Sun newspaper and its column The Secret Wag.
Vardy’s barrister Hugh Tomlinson QC told Mrs Justice Steyn: “The purpose of this application is to clear away a mass of irrelevant and peripheral material in order to save time and costs and focus on the main issues in the case.”
Judge Mrs Justice Steyn ruled the alleged dealings were relevant to the defence of libel action brought by Vardy, who is married to Leicester City footballer Jamie Vardy.
Vardy brought the libel case to court following a social media post shared by Rooney in October 2019, which accused her social media accounts of leaking private information to the press.
(Image: Leicester City FC via Getty Images)
In the now-infamous post, Rooney explained she had shared fake Instagram stories in the hopes of unmasking the person sharing private information without her consent.
She wrote: “I have saved and screenshotted all the original stories which clearly show just one person has viewed them. It’s ……………. Rebekah Vardy’s account.”
Vardy vehemently denied sharing Rooney’s private information with the press and immediately shared a public statement, in which she claimed to be the victim.
She said: “I never speak to anyone about you as various journalists who have asked me to over the years can vouch for.
“If you thought this was happening you could have told me and I could have changed my passwords to see if it stopped.
“Over the years various people have had access to my Insta & just this week I found I was following people I didn’t know and have never followed myself.”
Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
