'Wagatha' bills row as Vardy and Rooney return to court

Coleen Rooney’s lawyers have been accused of serious misconduct” by Rebekah Vardy’s legal team in a dispute over spiralling legal bills in the Wagatha Christie” libel battle.

- AMY-CLARE MARTIN

Ms Vardy lost the high-profile libel action in 2022 and was ordered to pay more than £1.8m to Ms Rooney, covering 90 per cent of her legal costs.

But lawyers for the media personality, who is married to Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, are continuing to dispute the amount owed, arguing yesterday in the High Court that Ms Rooney had deliberately understated her costs at an earlier hearing.

At a hearing in October last year, Ms Vardy's barristers told a costs judge that Ms Rooney and her legal team committed "serious misconduct" by understating some of her costs to "attack the other party's costs". A judge found no misconduct had been committed.

Appealing that decision yesterday, Jamie Carpenter KC said Ms Rooney "very substantially understated" her legal costs by around 40 per cent in her budget in a document called "precendent H❞ 2021, in written submissions for Ms Vardy.

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."