Rebekah Vardy has challenged the “sheer magnitude” of Coleen Rooney’s £1.8m legal costs from the “Wagatha Christie” libel trial, which include her lawyer’s stay at the Nobu Hotel and minibar bill, the high court has been told.
Vardy, the wife of the Leicester City footballer Jamie Vardy, lost the high-profile case in July 2022 after she sued Rooney for libel.
In 2019, Rooney, the wife of the former Manchester United striker Wayne, accused Vardy of leaking her private information to the press on social media, which Mrs Justice Steyn found was “substantially true”. In October 2022, the judge ordered Vardy to pay 90% of Rooney’s legal costs.
The women’s legal teams have returned to court in London in a dispute over the amount to be paid, after lawyers for Vardy argued that Rooney’s side have taken a “kitchen sink approach” to costs, with a legal bill totalling £1,833,906.89.
In written submissions for a hearing on Monday, Jamie Carpenter KC, representing Vardy, said the bill included a lawyer from Rooney’s team staying at a luxury hotel.
He said: “The court will have to consider whether it was reasonable for the partner at Brabners to stay at the Nobu hotel (incurring substantial dinner and drinks charges as well as mini bar charges, all of which are claimed in the bill) while lower grades of fee earner had to make do with the West End DoubleTree.
“The overall impression is of a bill drawn without sufficient care and a “kitchen sink” approach to the inclusion of items, despite the bill apparently having taken 172 hours to draft and the partner and senior associate spending 19 hours reviewing various drafts.”
Robin Dunne, representing Rooney, said in his written submissions that Vardy had shown “deplorable conduct” in the case, and that costs could have been lower if “she conducted this litigation appropriately”.
Carpenter said Rooney’s final legal bill was more three times her agreed budget of £540,779.07 and accused her team of “knowingly misleading” the court about their incurred costs before the trial started.
He said: “The costs dispute has been rendered particularly intractable by the sheer magnitude of the costs claimed by Rooney, in absolute terms and when compared to her agreed costs budget, the number of errors in the bill and the extraordinary nature of some of the costs claimed.
“The bill, drawn at 100% of the costs claimed … totals £1,833,906.89.”
He said the bill included “over £120,000 of costs to which Rooney has no entitlement”. He added that her barrister, David Sherborne, “charged total fees over the course of the proceedings of £497,850”, which was 80% higher than estimated.
Carpenter also questioned the number of hours billed by Rooney’s lawyers, saying: “It is the equivalent of one person working on the file for 2.4 hours a day every day (including weekends and bank holidays) from inception to conclusion.”
But Dunne blamed Vardy for the costs, saying: “Vardy’s argument appears to arise from her frustration that her deplorable conduct in this litigation has led to the budgets becoming irrelevant. Had she conducted this litigation appropriately then she could seek to restrict Rooney to the approved budgeted sums. She chose not to.”
He added: “It sits ill in Vardy’s mouth to now claim that Rooney’s costs, a great deal of which were caused directly by her conduct, are unreasonable.”
In her 2022 ruling, Mrs Justice Steyn described Vardy as an “untrustworthy witness” who was likely to have destroyed potentially crucial evidence on purpose. She concluded Vardy probably worked with her agent, Caroline Watt, to leak stories from Rooney’s private Instagram account to the Sun, providing tips to tabloid journalists and aiding them with their inquiries.
Rooney had conducted a “sting” operation to find out who was leaking stories from her private Instagram account to journalists at the Sun. She went public in 2019, alleging: “It’s … Rebekah Vardy’s account.”
In his submissions on Monday, Dunne said costs for forensic IT experts could have been reduced had it not been for Vardy’s conduct.
He said: “Disclosure was extremely complex and time consuming. Due to Vardy’s wholly unreasonable behaviour and conduct in improperly redacting her evidence, withholding highly relevant and damaging (to Vardy) evidence and destroying evidence.”
He added: “The conduct of Vardy throughout meant that significant additional resources as well as skill and expertise was required. In essence, Rooney was faced with an opponent who was not truthful, destroyed key evidence and who was content to rely on statements which were inaccurate.”
The hearing before Senior Costs Judge Gordon-Saker, which was not attended by Rooney or Vardy on Monday, will conclude on Wednesday.
