Wagatha Christie: Rebekah Vardy loses bid to cut Coleen Rooney's legal costs - how much does she owe?

Vardy had argued that Rooney’s lawyers had “deliberately” understated her legal costs during the 2022 libel trial, in which Vardy was accused of leaking private information about Rooney to news outlets. The judge in that case ruled that it was “substantially true” that Vardy had sold private information to the press and was instructed to pay 90% of Rooney’s legal costs following the ruling.

While Rooney’s lawyers originally estimated the costs to total £540,000, the real total amounted to £1.8 million. Vardy’s lawyer Jamie Carpenter KC argued that Rooney’s legal team had “deceived” the court by underestimating time and cost spent on the original trial so that Rooney could "use the apparent difference in incurred costs to attack the other party's costs".

He also claimed that the legal team had used a “kitchen sink approach” when calculating the total. This included a stay at the upscale, five-star Nobu hotel, and “substantial dinner and drinks charges as well as minibar charges". Robin Dunne KQ, representing Rooney, blasted the claims as “frankly outrageous”, adding that Vardy had shown “deplorable conduct” throughout the case and that costs would have been substantially lower if “she conducted this litigation appropriately”.

Dunne added: "This was a libel claim which Mrs Vardy chose to launch, despite knowing that the Instagram post was true.

"Mrs Vardy refused to engage with Mrs Rooney to try and avoid these proceedings and by her conduct meant that significant additional costs were required to be incurred by Mrs Rooney. It sits ill in Mrs Vardy's mouth to now claim that Mrs Rooney's costs, a great deal of which were caused directly by her conduct, are unreasonable."

However, Senior Costs Judge Andrew Gordon-Saker ruled on Tuesday, October 8 that there was no apparent wrongdoing from Rooney’s legal team. He added that while there was a “failure to be transparent”, there had not “sufficiently unreasonable or improper” reason to believe this had constitute misconduct.

As a result, Vardy may be expected to pay up to £1.6m of Rooney’s legal fees as a result of the ruling.