No misconduct by Coleen Rooney lawyers, says judge

Coleen Rooney's lawyers did not commit misconduct over her costs in the so-called Wagatha Christie row with Rebekah Vardy, a High Court judge has ruled.

Mrs Vardy sued Mrs Rooney for libel in 2022 but lost. The pair are now locked in a further battle over how much Mrs Vardy should pay in legal costs.

Last October, a judge ruled Mrs Rooney's legal team had not committed wrongdoing and that, therefore, it was "not an appropriate case" to reduce the amount of money that Mrs Vardy should pay.

Mrs Vardy appealed against the decision, but in a ruling on Thursday, High Court judge Mr Justice Cavanagh dismissed the appeal.

"The appeal must fail on the basis that the judge was entitled to reach the conclusion that he came to," he said.

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Mrs Vardy, the wife of Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, mounted the original legal action after Mrs Rooney, the wife of former Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney, publicly accused someone using Mrs Vardy's Instagram account of leaking private information about her to the press.

Mrs Vardy sued her for libel, but Mrs Justice Steyn found in July 2022 that the allegation was "substantially true".

The judge later ordered Mrs Vardy to pay 90% of Mrs Rooney's costs, including an initial payment of £800,000.

A previous hearing in London was told that Mrs Rooney's claimed legal bill - £1,833,906.89 - was more than three times her "agreed costs budget of £540,779.07".

Mrs Vardy's lawyer Jamie Carpenter KC argued that was "disproportionate".

He claimed that Mrs Rooney's legal team had committed misconduct by understating some of her costs so she could "use the apparent difference in incurred costs thereby created to attack the other party's costs", which was "knowingly misleading".

Robin Dunne, for Mrs Rooney, said that "there has been no misconduct" and that it was "illogical to say that we misled anyone".

He added that the argument that the amount owed should be reduced was "misconceived" and that the budget was "not designed to be an accurate or binding representation" of her overall legal costs.

In the event, senior costs judge Andrew Gordon-Saker ruled that while there was a "failure to be transparent", it was not "sufficiently unreasonable or improper" to constitute misconduct.

He ordered Mrs Vardy to pay Mrs Rooney a further £100,000 ahead of the full amount owed being decided at a later date.

Mrs Vardy later launched an appeal bid against the decision, claiming it constituted "serious misconduct", while Mrs Rooney's lawyers claimed the challenge was "misconceived".

BBC News has asked Mrs Rooney and Mrs Vardy's representatives for a comment.