Vardy v Rooney: Vardy ‘had no choice’ but to bring libel case, court toldon May 10, 2022 at 10:37 am

Rebekah Vardy “had no choice” but to bring the libel claim against Coleen Rooney to “establish her innocence and vindicate her reputation”, the High Court has been told.

Mrs Vardy’s libel case against Mrs Rooney got underway on Tuesday.

The so-called Wagatha Christie case sees Mrs Vardy suing Mrs Rooney over claims the latter leaked fake stories about her to The Sun newspaper.

The claimant, Mrs Vardy, is set to testify first on day one.

Defendant Mrs Rooney, and her husband, the former England footballer Wayne, are expected to give evidence next week.

The row broke out in 2019 after Mrs Rooney posted online that fake stories had been leaked to The Sun newspaper, which she claimed could only have been seen by Mrs Vardy’s Instagram account.

Mrs Vardy strenuously denied being the source of the leak, immediately phoning Mrs Rooney to protest her innocence and within half an hour posting her defence on social media saying a number of people had access to her accounts.

When no public apology from Mrs Rooney came, Mrs Vardy, in June 2020, decided to sue her for libel.

In written submissions to the court on Tuesday, Mrs Vardy’s lawyer Hugh Tomlinson QC said: “The allegation in the post was and remains false: Mrs Vardy had not leaked information about Mrs Rooney or her friends and family to the Sun newspaper from her private Instagram account.

“Mrs Rooney did not have the irrefutable evidence that she claimed to have had: her so-called ‘careful investigation’ was nothing of the sort.

“If anyone had been leaking information from Mrs Rooney’s private Instagram this was not done with Mrs Vardy’s knowledge or approval.”

He added that his client had made “strenuous but unsuccessful attempts” to settle the case but the post was not taken down.

“As result, Mrs Vardy had no choice but to bring this libel action to establish her innocence and vindicate her reputation,” he continued.

The celebrity civil trial is set to run for seven days.

Mrs Rooney arrived at court, alongside her husband, in a surgical boot – shades of when Wayne injured his metatarsal before the 2006 World Cup; the same tournament that the England “Wags” (wives and girlfriends) first exploded on to the scene in Germany.

Journalists queued to get inside a packed courtroom for this most intriguing of cases.

Mrs Vardy sat at the front left bench with her hair in a bun, wearing a blue dress, while Mrs Rooney, wearing a black jacket, sat at the front right bench.

Mrs Vardy’s lawyer has previously acted for Roman Abramovich, while Mrs Rooney is being represented by David Sherborne, who acted for Johnny Depp in his unsuccessful libel suit against The Sun in 2020.

Mrs Rooney’s claim, which she posted online in October 2019, swiftly went viral, and soon saw her given the nickname “Wagatha Christie” – a nod to Wags and crime author Agatha Christie.

With pride in mind and reputations at stake on both sides, the onus is on the defendant, Mrs Rooney, to prove that it was in fact Mrs Vardy who leaked the stories.

The pre-trial hearings went on for 18 months and threw up a late plot twist when Mrs Rooney’s barrister said in April that Mrs Vardy now “appears to accept” that her own PR agent, Caroline Watt, was the source of leaked stories about her.

Mrs Watt, who has been deemed too ill to testify, will be represented by Ian Helme.