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.
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 today 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 on Monday, 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.”
He continued: “Although the costs judge was critical of Ms Rooney’s lawyers for their lack of transparency, he held ‘on balance’ and ‘only just’ that there was no misconduct. It is respectfully submitted that he was wrong to do so.”
Mr Carpenter said a “proportionate sanction” for the alleged misconduct would be to limit the amount of Ms Rooney’s legal costs up to August 2021 to be paid by Ms Vardy to £220,955.07.
Ms Rooney, whose husband Wayne Rooney is a former England captain, is opposing the appeal and her lawyers insist there is “no tenable case” of misconduct.
In 2019 she accused Ms Vardy, a former I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! contestant, of leaking her private information to the press on social media, which Mrs Justice Steyn found in July 2022 was “substantially true”.
The judge later ordered Ms Vardy to pay 90 per cent of Ms Rooney’s costs, including an initial payment of £800,000.
The hearing in October was told that Ms Rooney’s claimed legal bill – £1,833,906.89 – was more than three times her “agreed costs budget of £540,779.07”, which Mr Carpenter said was “disproportionate”.
He continued that the earlier “understatement” of some costs was “improper and unreasonable” and “involved knowingly misleading Ms Vardy and the court”, meaning it should be reduced.
Ms Rooney’s team argued the bid was “misconceived” and insisted the budget was “not designed to be an accurate or binding representation” of her overall legal costs.
Senior Costs Judge Andrew Gordon-Saker found “on balance and, I have to say, only just” that Ms Rooney’s legal team had not committed wrongdoing, and therefore it was “not an appropriate case” to reduce the amount of money Ms Vardy should pay.
He said that while there was a “failure to be transparent”, it was not “sufficiently unreasonable or improper” to constitute misconduct.
On Monday, Mr Carpenter claimed that Ms Rooney “declared 56 per cent of the true level of her incurred costs” in her original budget, submitted in February 2021, which said she had incurred costs of around £181,000, when she had actually incurred just under £324,000.
He continued that in revised budgets, submitted for a preliminary hearing in August 2021, Ms Rooney claimed to have incurred costs of around £221,000, against Ms Vardy’s incurred costs of just over £469,000.
But Mr Carpenter said Ms Rooney’s full legal bill up to the hearing showed she had incurred costs of more than £367,000, around 40 per cent more.
In his written submissions, Benjamin Williams KC, for Ms Rooney, said her budget was “properly and correctly completed” and there was “no tenable case” of misconduct.
He said: “Ms Rooney’s primary position is that, in this, she and her solicitors were adopting the right approach; but even if this is not correct, it was a reasonable approach.”
He continued: “A party is not required to certify what they have actually spent, but rather the ‘costs which it would be reasonable and proportionate for my client to incur in this litigation’.”
He added it would be “unjust and disproportionate” to limit the amount Ms Vardy should pay.
Mr Justice Cavanagh and acting Senior Costs Judge Jason Rowley will give their decision at a later date.
