Rebekah Vardy facing £1.5m legal fees

Rebekah Vardy could have to pay almost £1.5m to Coleen Rooney in legal fees after losing yet another stage in the “Wagatha Christie” libel trial.

The high court on Tuesday decided that Vardy, who lives near Grantham, must pay 90% of Rooney’s court costs, a larger proportion than in many equivalent cases. The judge imposed the punitive charge partly because Vardy deliberately destroyed WhatsApp messages and other evidence relevant to the trial.

As a result Vardy will have to hand over £800,000 immediately to Rooney, with further payments to follow, up to around £1.5m. On top of this, Vardy will have to pay her own legal costs, which could bring Vardy’s combined bill to well over £3m.

This means that not only did Vardy voluntarily bring a libel case that destroyed her own reputation, she will also have paid millions of pounds for the privilege of being publicly humiliated.

Paul Lunt of Brabners solicitors, who represented Rooney, said the ruling reflected the fact Vardy deliberately destroyed evidence. As a result her conduct fell “outside the ordinary and reasonable conduct expected of a party in legal proceedings”.

He said the loss of a phone containing potentially vital evidence over the side of a boat in the North Sea had driven up the final bill: “Coleen’s pursuit of that evidence is a major reason why her legal costs increased substantially from the original estimates given to the court long before the start of the trial.”

Vardy has also been ordered to pay the legal costs of journalists at the Sun who were dragged into the case. This may seem ironic, given that part of Wagatha Christie trial revolved around claims Vardy had sought to be paid for stories by some of the same Sun journalists.