"Wagatha Christie" court ruling: Coleen Rooney cleared of libeling Rebekah Vardy in case between wives of soccer stars
In a legal showdown between soccer spouses that mixed celebrity, social media and amateur sleuthing, a judge has ruled whodunnit.
Judge Karen Steyn on Friday cleared Coleen Rooney of libeling Rebekah Vardy by claiming that Vardy had leaked her private social media posts to the tabloid press.
The judge said in a written ruling that Rooney's allegation was "substantially true." Steyn said it was likely that Vardy's agent, Caroline Watt, had passed private information to The Sun newspaper, and that "Mrs. Vardy knew of and condoned this behavior."
Vardy sued after Rooney accused her in 2019 of sharing private Instagram content with The Sun.
The case, heard at the High Court in May, was a media sensation. The women are celebrities in their own right, and both are married to famous footballers: Vardy to Leicester City and England striker Jamie Vardy, Rooney to former Manchester United and England star Wayne Rooney.
Then there was the amateur detective work that led to Rooney's accusation. Rooney, 36, has said she purposely posted fake stories on Instagram to find out who was passing her private information to the press. The stories - including one about a fictitious basement flood at the Rooneys' house and another reporting Coleen Rooney was trying to revive her TV career — duly appeared in The Sun.
Rooney said she had blocked all accounts from seeing her Instagram stories apart from the one she suspected of being the leaker. In an October 2019 social media post to almost 2 million followers, she revealed: "It's ................ Rebekah Vardy's account."
Rooney was dubbed "Wagatha Christie," a play on the slang term "WAG"— wives and girlfriends of sports stars — and the name of crime author Agatha Christie.
Vardy, 40, strenuously denied leaking, and sued for libel "to establish her innocence and vindicate her reputation," her lawyer Hugh Tomlinson said.
The case caused a media frenzy during seven days of hearings as the two women went to court, along with their husbands, despite being urged by judges and legal experts to settle. The case has reportedly cost each side more than 1 million pounds ($1.2 million) in legal fees.
Both women testified during the trial, with Vardy several times breaking down in tears. The judge was scathing about Vardy's credibility as a witness, saying some of her evidence was "manifestly inconsistent with the contemporaneous documentary evidence, evasive or implausible." Rooney, in contrast, was "honest and reliable," the judge said.
Vardy's agent did not give evidence. Vardy's lawyers said Watt's health was too fragile for her to take the stand. Watt's phone, which was sought by Rooney's lawyers as a piece of evidence, was reported to have fallen into the North Sea.
The judge noted that the chances this was an accident were "slim."
Though the case was treated by the media and much of the public as an entertaining spectacle, the judge noted that it had a human cost.
She said Vardy had faced "vile abuse" after Rooney's post, "including messages wishing her, her family, and even her then-unborn baby, ill in the most awful terms."
"Nothing of which Mrs. Vardy has been accused, nor any of the findings in this judgment, provide any justification or excuse for subjecting her or her family, or any other person involved in this case, to such vitriol," Steyn said.
Alex Vakil, a lawyer who has worked on similar cases in British courts, told CBS News the case shines a light on "inherent risks in hard-fought litigation between high-profile individuals, particularly when parties are subjected to robust cross-examination."
"Had (Vardy) succeeded, this ordeal may have been worth it," Vakil said. "Instead, Ms. Vardy is left to settle what is likely to be a monstrous legal costs bill. The experience of Ms. Vardy may serve as a warning to other future litigants considering embarking on such action."