Rebekah Vardy has been ordered to pay Coleen Rooney £800,000 in legal costs after her failed libel trial.
In a court order handed down by the High Court on Tuesday, Ms Justice Steyn said Ms Vardy would have to pay the £800,000 sum by 4pm on 15 November.
Ms Vardy will also have to pay the legal costs of journalists who were summoned as witnesses for the trial.
Ms Vardy sued Ms Rooney for defamation after she publicly accused her of being the source of stories that were leaked to The Sun newspaper.
In October 2019, the wife of former England star Wayne Rooney published a post on her social media accounts saying she had carried out a months-long “sting operation” and accused Ms Vardy of leaking “false stories” about her private life to the press.
Ms Vardy denied leaking stories to the media and sued Ms Rooney for libel. Ms Justice Steyne ruled that even if Ms Vardy was not the direct source of the leak, evidence showed that she “knew of, condoned and actively engaged” in information being passed on to The Sun.
The court order for costs, published on Tuesday, revealed that Ms Rooney’s team had initially sought a payment of £1,250,895.36, but reduced the figure to £1,000,000.
Ms Vardy “accepts that she was the unsuccessul party”, Ms Justice Steyn wrote in the order. But her team argued for a 20 per cent reduction on Ms Rooney’s costs because of her success in certain aspects of the case.
More to follow…
