Coleen Rooney in multi million pounds defamation legal defence against Rebekah Vardy as battle of football stars’ wives lands in court
Rebekah Vardy has launched defamation proceedings against Coleen Rooney at the high court in London, in what could be an extraordinary legal case detailing the feud between the two women and their relationships with the British tabloid media.
Rooney made the headlines last year when she publicly claimed Vardy had been leaking stories from her private Instagram account to the Sun newspaper, after setting an elaborate trap on social media.
Rooney then posted a fabricated announcement on Instagram that the basement of her new house had been flooded. When it ended up as a news story in the Sun, she decided to go public with the accusation that Vardy was responsible for leaking personal information to the press – earning Rooney the nickname “Wagatha Christie”.
Vardy, a reality TV star who is married to the Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, denied any wrongdoing and later said the stress of their public dispute had caused her to have severe anxiety attacks amid widespread public mockery. She claimed at the time that other individuals may have had access to her Instagram account and announced a forensic audit of her social media profiles.
Since then the two women have been running up legal bills, while attempts to mediate the case have failed. Court filings show Vardy filed defamation proceedings at the high court earlier this month, where she will be represented by the leading law firm Kingsley Napley.
If the two parties fail to reach an agreement the defamation case would go to trial, although proceedings would be unlikely to take place until 2021. No paperwork has been filed other than to note Vardy’s intention to sue and confirming the lawyers involved in the case.
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