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Coleen Rooney has been awarded full costs after Rebekah Vardy’s appeal was dismissed, with the judge ruling no reduction was warranted in the ongoing Wagatha Christie case.
There will be no reduction in legal costs awarded to Coleen Rooney after Rebekah Vardy’s failed appeal, a judge has ruled in the latest chapter of the high-profile Wagatha Christie litigation.
Vardy had appealed a previous decision, arguing that Rooney or her solicitors had acted improperly during the budgeting process for legal costs. However, Mr Justice Cavanagh rejected the claim, stating that Rooney had been “entirely successful” at the appeal hearing and that any contested points only made up a minor part of the proceedings.
“Whilst there can be circumstances in which it is appropriate to disallow some of a successful party’s costs… this is not such a case,” the judge said. He noted that the disputed arguments were covered in just five paragraphs of a 76-paragraph judgment.
He also declined to allow a payment on account of costs, explaining: “The whole point of a summary assessment is to ensure that the party in whose favour a costs award is made recovers its costs within a short time… there is no need for a payment on account.”
Mr Justice Cavanagh confirmed that senior costs judge Jason Rowley would oversee the summary assessment, rather than costs judge Andrew Whalan, who is handling a detailed assessment of Vardy’s costs liabilities from her failed defamation case against Rooney.
The ruling marks another legal setback for Vardy following her high-profile libel defeat in 2022, after she sued Rooney for defamation over social media claims that Vardy’s Instagram account had leaked stories to the press. The case has since spiralled into extensive litigation over legal fees, reportedly totalling millions of pounds.