Rebekah Vardy agrees to pay £1.2m of Coleen Rooney’s legal costs

Rebekah Vardy has agreed to pay almost £1.2 million of Coleen Rooney’s legal costs following their libel battle, a judge has been told.

Mrs Rooney ran up a legal bill totalling more than £1.8 million while successfully defending herself against Mrs Vardy’s High Court claim in 2022, a specialist costs court previously heard.

Now, in written submissions to a hearing on Tuesday, Mrs Vardy’s barrister, Juliet Wells, said Mrs Rooney’s total legal bill of £1,833,906.89 “has now been settled at £1,190,000, being [approximately] £1,125,000 plus interest of [approximately] £65.000”.

There are still some costs to be ironed out at the hearing but judge Mark Whalan said he was “pleased” that the two sides had come to an agreement after a “hard-fought” battle.

Ms Wells added that Mrs Rooney is now claiming what the lawyer called “assessment costs” of more than £300,000 that were “grossly disproportionate”.

She recommended they should be capped at “no more than £100,000”.

In written submissions, Ms Wells said that Mrs Rooney’s original £1.8m legal bill was “substandard” and included costs “of briefing the press” and others to which she had “no entitlement”.

But lawyers for Mrs Rooney said in their written submissions that Mrs Vardy was “the author of her own misfortune” and that she should “reflect upon her approach”.

Judge Whalan added that he was “pleased” that the two sides had come to a “commercial accommodation”.

Mrs Rooney is the wife of ex-England footballer Wayne Rooney while Mrs Vardy is married to his former teammate Jamie Vardy, though both women are now celebrities and TV personalities in their own right.