Rebekah Vardy has been ordered to pay Coleen Rooney £1.5 million, after losing their infamous Wagatha Christie battle.
The wife of Jamie Vardy lost her high-profile libel case against Coleen back in July, following a seven-day trial at London’s High Court.
Judge Mrs Justice Steyn has now ordered Rebekah to cover 90 per cent of Coleen’s £1,667,860 legal costs, which amounts to £1.5 million.
According to The Sun, the 40-year-old has been told to pay £800k of the settlement by 4pm on November 15.
A written judgment read: “In my judgment, a reasonable sum on account, doing the best I can to estimate the likely level of recovery subject to an appropriate margin to allow for error in the estimation, and bearing in mind that at this stage the Defendant has not produced a bill of costs, is £800,000.”
Last month, it was reported that Coleen had doubled her legal costs after winning the Wagatha Christie trial back in July.
The increased costs amount to approximately £2 million; however, £350,000 of this was already racked up before the trial – resulting in the figure being reduced to £1,667,860.
The figure Rebekah has been ordered to pay is on top of her own legal costs, which are believed to be around the same amount as Coleen’s.
In October 2019, the wife of Wayne Rooney claimed she planted false information on her private Instagram page and blocked everyone from her story – except Rebekah’s account.
The mother-of-four said stories about her basement flooding, returning to TV, and gender selection were only viewed by Rebekah’s account – and the false stories all made it into the press.
Coleen believed this was proof that her fellow WAG allegedly sold stories about her private life, but Rebekah vehemently denied her claims.
Their lengthy legal battle concluded with a seven-day trial at London’s High Court in May 2022.
The highly-publicised trial saw both WAGs give evidence in court, as Rebekah tried to prove she wasn’t behind the leaks.
However, Coleen defended her claim in court on the basis her post was “substantially true”.
Mrs Justice Steyn, who oversaw the week-long case in May, delivered her written ruling in July.
In her ruling, the judge agreed with Coleen’s defence, and said it was “likely” that Rebekah’s then-agent, Caroline Watt, “undertook the direct act” of passing information to The Sun newspaper.
Rebekah strongly denied Coleen’s claims in court, but on the final day of the trial, she accepted that her former agent Caroline, who had access to her Instagram account, may have been behind the leaks.
Coleen has since signed a “multi-million pound” deal with Disney+ for the rights to a tell-all documentary about the Wagatha Christie case; meanwhile Rebekah has reportedly signed a deal to take part in a separate tell-all documentary.
