Coleen Rooney fumes she might not get £1.8M legal bill back after Rebekah Vardy dragged her into ‘pathetic’ court case and won’t forgive her WAG rival until she admits wrongdoing

Coleen Rooney has expressed her frustration at potentially losing money after being dragged into a ‘pathetic’ court case. 

The WAG, 37, was sued by Rebekah Vardy, 41, for libel but after she won the case it was ordered that her legal bills be reimbursed. 

Coleen’s lawyers passed on a £1.8 million legal bill to Rebekah, who has blasted the ‘inflated’ sum that was alleged to include expenses for luxury hotel stays and pricey meals.

Speaking about the costs incurred in the trial in her new Disney+ series, Coleen mused: ‘It was a pathetic reason to go to court, I wish we could’ve settled it. 

‘The money was absolutely ridiculous and I might not get all my money back.’ 

Annoyed: Coleen Rooney has expressed her frustration at potentially losing money after being dragged into a ‘pathetic’ court case (pictured with her lawyer Paul Lunt)

Own goal: The WAG, 37, was sued by Rebekah Vardy, 41, (pictured)  for libel but after she won the case it was ordered that her legal bills be reimbursed

With her own court costs believed to be adding up to around £4 million and an order to pay Coleen’s, Rebekah faces an estimated £6 million in legal fees.

Sources told The Sun she was left ‘furious after seeing Coleen’s bill’ and has launched a ‘war’ over the costs. 

The insiders said she will pay what she ‘rightfully owes’ but thinks she is ‘pushing her luck by asking for almost £2million’. 

Lawyers acting for Coleen said an original – much lower – sum mooted at the start of proceedings was always going to be higher.

The war of the WAGs was started when Coleen sensationally turned detective to uncover a friend who was telling tales to the media. 

She spoke out about her experiences of having her personal life leaked to the press in October 2019, ending the tweet with the jaw-dropping line: ‘It’s… Rebekah Vardy’s account’. 

Rebekah sued the newly dubbed ‘Wagatha Christie’ for libel, denying she was the media source, but lost the case in July last year when mother-of-four Coleen’s post was found to be ‘substantially true’ by a judge. 

Sharing her outcome at winning the case, Coleen shared in her docu-series: ‘For me getting justice for telling the truth is the most important thing. 

‘I can now focus on everything that’s important to me.’

On her thoughts about Rebekah now she added: ‘We all make mistakes in life and when someone holds their hands up and says “I’ve done wrong” you can forgive and you can move on.

‘But she’s still denying and saying it wasn’t her so it makes it a hard thing to do.’ 

How it all began: On October 9, 2019, Coleen accused Rebekah’s Instagram account of leaking ‘false stories’ about her to the press (above) 

Elsewhere in the documentary, Coleen revealed that it was after Wayne’s drink driving arrest that Rebekah Vardy started leaking stories about her to The Sun newspaper. 

She was forced to reevaluate the couple’s marriage in September 2017 when the former England captain was stopped by police after leaving a nightclub with Laura Simpson. 

Wagatha Christie timeline: How Coleen and Rebekah’s war unfolded 

September 2017 to October 2019 – The Sun runs a number of articles about Coleen, including that she travelled to Mexico to look into baby ‘gender selection’ treatment, her plan to revive her TV career and the flooding of her basement.

October 9, 2019 – Coleen uses social media to accuse Rebekah of selling stories from her private Instagram account to the tabloids.

Coleen says she spent five months attempting to work out who was sharing information about her and her family based on posts she had made on her personal social media page.

After sharing a series of ‘false’ stories and using a process of elimination, Coleen claims they were viewed by one Instagram account, belonging to Rebekah.

Rebekah, then pregnant with her fifth child, denies the allegations and says various people had access to her Instagram over the years.

She claims to be ‘so upset’ by Coleen’s accusation, later adding: ‘I thought she was my friend but she completely annihilated me.’

The public dispute makes headlines around the world, with the hashtag #WagathaChristie trending.

How it all began: On October 9, 2019, Coleen Rooney, now 36, accused Rebekah Vardy, 40, of leaking ‘false stories’ about her to the press in an Instagram post (above) 

February 13, 2020 – In a tearful appearance on ITV’s Loose Women, Rebekah says the stress of the dispute caused her to have severe anxiety attacks and she ‘ended up in hospital three times’. Coleen says in a statement that she does not want to ‘engage in further public debate’.

Shortly after Coleen’s public accusation, Rebekah – who was pregnant and on holiday in Dubai at the time – denied any involvement (above) 

June 23, 2020 – It emerges that Rebekah has launched libel proceedings against Coleen.

Rebekah’s lawyers allege she ‘suffered extreme distress, hurt, anxiety and embarrassment as a result of the publication of the post and the events which followed’.

November 19-20, 2020 – The libel battle has its first High Court hearing in London. A judge rules that Coleen’s October 2019 post ‘clearly identified’ Rebekah as being ‘guilty of the serious and consistent breach of trust’.

Mr Justice Warby concludes that the ‘natural and ordinary’ meaning of the posts was that Rebekah had ‘regularly and frequently abused her status as a trusted follower of Coleen’s personal Instagram account by secretly informing The Sun of Coleen’s private posts and stories’.

February 8-9, 2022 – A series of explosive messages between Rebekah and her agent Caroline Watt – which Coleen’s lawyers allege were about her – are revealed at a preliminary court hearing.

The court is told Rebekah was not referring to Coleen when she called someone a ‘nasty b***h’ in one exchange with Ms Watt.

Coleen’s lawyers seek further information from the WhatsApp messages, but the court is told that Ms Watt’s phone fell into the North Sea after a boat she was on hit a wave, before further information could be extracted from it.

February 14 – Coleen is refused permission to bring a High Court claim against Ms Watt for misuse of private information to be heard alongside the libel battle. A High Court judge, Mrs Justice Steyn, says the bid was brought too late and previous opportunities to make the claim had not been taken.

April 13 – Ms Watt is not fit to give oral evidence at the upcoming libel trial, the High Court is told as the case returns for another hearing.

The agent revokes permission for her witness statement to be used, and withdraws her waiver which would have allowed Sun journalists to say whether she was a source of the allegedly leaked stories.

April 29 – Rebekah ‘appears to accept’ that her agent was the source of allegedly leaked stories, Coleen’s barrister David Sherborne tells the High Court. He argues that a new witness statement submitted by Rebekah suggests Ms Watt was the source but Rebekah claims she ‘did not authorise or condone her’.

Rebekah’s lawyer Hugh Tomlinson says the statement did not contain ‘any change whatever in the pleaded case’, with her legal team having no communication with Ms Watt.

Wayne plead guilty to drink driving and was fined £170 by the court and banned from driving for two years. 

He was also ordered to complete 100 hours of unpaid work as part of a twelve-month community order.

His football club Everton fined him two weeks’ wages, which was in the region of £300,000.

Coleen, admitted her head was ‘all over the place’ after the arrest and while she was staying with her parents, she took to her private Instagram account – only followed by friends and loved ones – to share a picture with her sons that she captioned: ‘no matter where I am they always follow me, and I hope that lasts forever’.

After the post she was inundated with supportive messages from friends, with Rebekah also reaching out and offering up her annex for Coleen and the kids to stay in, prompting Coleen to share that she was camped out at her mother’s.  

Coleen recalled: ‘I thought she was just being caring and sympathising because she’s been in the public eye as well.’

Worried that people would start ‘feeling sorry’ for her, Coleen decided to delete the post from her page, explaining: ‘I wasn’t in the state of mind for answering people and I just thought, take it down, delete it. I forgot about it and didn’t think anything else of it.’

However, the next day Coleen spotted a story in The Sun newspaper revealing she had left the marital home to stay at her mother’s. 

She instantly realised that it contained information about her private Instagram post but explained she had ‘too many things going on’ to address the matter and decided to not take any action. 

The TV personality then headed off to Barbados to clear her head on a family holiday with her sons, with Coleen recalling: ‘They were young and didn’t understand what was going on. Wayne was back home, we were still talking things through. 

‘But he’s a good dad and while we were away it was Wayne’s birthday. So I put an Instagram post on my personal account wishing him happy birthday from the boys.’

To Coleen’s dismay the private post ended up in The Sun newspaper again, and she confessed: ‘I was upset. I was fuming someone was passing on my private Instagram. It was the second time it had happened now so it made me think, is that the same person?

‘I was just trying to figure out why is someone doing this to me? It could be for money, it could be for press attention. I did go through and look at people but it was so hard to think who it could be.’ 

Struggling to narrow down the culprit, Coleen issued a warning, posting on her Stories: ‘Who’s my snitch of a follower? This is a private account.’ 

The warning didn’t work, however, and just a few weeks later there was another leak to The Sun after Coleen posted a snap back in her marital home with the children as they celebrated Halloween with Wayne. 

The leak came at a stressful time for Coleen who admitted she ‘still wasn’t in a good place’ with Wayne but had returned to their marital home for the sake of their children. 

Looking back, Wayne confessed: ‘It was a relief to finally see her back home. I want to spend the whole of my life with Coleen, to put myself in a position where I could almost throw that away is just so silly and stupid of me. It’s not what I want at all.’ 

Yet while she struggled to repair her marriage, Coleen was also consumed with thoughts on which one of her followers was sharing her content.  

At this point Coleen realised the pattern of stories appearing in The Sun and given the newspaper’s history with the people of Liverpool, she discounted any of her Scouse friends and families being the leak. 

Still faced with too many suspects, however, Coleen put up another warning post, calling out ‘the GRASS’, as she admitted: ‘I felt betrayed because it’s sly. 

‘The way I was brought up and the community I lived in you don’t stab someone in the back, you don’t do that, you don’t betray people.’

Having spotted the post, Rebekah was quick to message Coleen and questioned if The Sun could have hacked her account directly, a move that left Coleen feeling ‘paranoid.’ 

Having confided in Wayne that a post had been leaked, he shared his advice, admitting: ‘I said to Coleen “just delete it”. Social media is not something you need. 

‘She said no and that’s the way she is, quite stubborn, and that’s what I like about her she’s got her own mind and does things in her own way.’ 

The following summer, Wayne was offered the chance to play in the States for D.C United and so the Rooneys opted to relocate for a ‘fresh start’. 

Coleen admitted she wasn’t thrilled about going, explaining: ‘It was a massive decision, especially with four children. My main thought was we need to be together as a family and if Wayne wanted to go then we needed to be there.’ 

 Her friend admitted that when she asked Coleen if she wanted to make the move, the WAG had responded:  ‘I don’t think we’ve got a choice. 

‘Our marriage is still quite vulnerable, it’s still a little bit uncertain. That decision was based on if we want to save this marriage we need to go as a family.’ 

Once living in the States, Coleen struggled with feelings of loneliness and being homesick. 

Realising that his wife was struggling with the move, Wayne called his agent and told him they needed to return to the U.K.

With two years left on his contract with D.C. United, Wayne then inked a deal to return to England as a player-coach with EFL Championship side Derby County.

Coleen Rooney: The Real Wagatha Story is available to stream on Disney+ 

Feud: Coleen and Rebekah first met at the England v Wales, UEFA Euro 2016 match (pictures) as their husbands Wayne and Jamie were playing 

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