Only the rich can play
Vardy v Rooney: the sequel
Fleet Street’s finest will be hovering around the High Court this morning, hoping to catch sight of two footballers’ wives who kept the newspapers in business two years ago.
They’ll be there because the indispensable law courts reporters at PA News spotted this item tucked away in the cause list published on a busy Friday afternoon:
“In person” doesn’t mean that Rebekah Vardy or Coleen Rooney have to be in court; it simply means that the hearing will not take place remotely. But I suspect there will be rather more reporters around than you would normally find covering hearings in the Senior Courts Costs Office, as it’s now called.
They may be disappointed. Disputes over money sometimes settle in the hours leading up to a hearing or even at the door of the court. But Vardy does not give up easily: she must have been advised that she risked losing her defamation claim against Rooney — as, in the end, she did.
Rooney had previously accused Vardy of leaking private information about her to the Sun. Vardy denied passing information to the newspaper but Rooney’s detective work identified her as the source. That’s why Vardy’s unsuccessful libel claim against Rooney became known as the Wagatha Christie trial.
Civil litigation works on the principle that the loser pays all. The aim is to deter people from wasting everybody’s time by bringing or defending a hopeless case. If a court rules against you, you have to pay the other side’s legal costs as well as your own.
In July 2022, Mrs Justice Steyn dismissed Vardy’s claim because Rooney had proved that her social media post — famously ending with the phrase “It’s ………. Rebekah Vardy’s account” — was “substantially true”. But it emerged later that year that Vardy would have to pay only 90 per cent of Rooney’s legal costs.
The judge said the reduction of 10 per cent was justified by issues including Rooney’s “weak” allegation that Vardy was one of the people behind the Sun's “Secret Wag” gossip column and Rooney’s unsuccessful public-interest defence.
If the two sets of lawyers had agreed on a figure for Rooney’s costs, it would have been easy enough to reduce it by 10 per cent. But we can infer the two sides could not reach agreement, perhaps because there was a dispute about the rates charged by Rooney’s lawyers or perhaps because there was disagreement over which payments should be included.
That’s where the costs judges come in. These specialist adjudicators assess the fees and expenses incurred during civil cases and rule on how much successful parties can recover. They can reduce the costs claimed if these are found to be unreasonable.
Today’s case is being heard by Andrew Gordon-Saker, a costs judge since 2003 and Senior Costs Judge (Chief Taxing Master) since 2014.
Costs judges also deal with disputes about fees between solicitors and their clients. And they hear appeals against costs ordered against defendants in criminal proceedings.
How much?
Media estimates of court costs are not always reliable. But we know that Vardy has already had to pay an initial sum of £800,000. That suggests the final figure will be substantially higher.
It was reported in October 2022 that the legal costs Rooney incurred in defending Vardy’s claim were running at £1,667,860 — though that was not the final figure. Reducing that by 10 per cent suggests a payment in the region of £1.5 million. Vardy has also had to pay her own lawyers’ costs, which must be comparable.
There was no award of damages because the Vardy lost her claim and there was no counterclaim by Rooney.
Playing professional football can certainly make you very wealthy. Even playwrights can get in on the act. But libel is a game that only the rich can play.
Update 29 May: Vardy is expected to challenge the amount she has been ordered to pay to Rooney at a hearing later this year.
Yesterday, it was Rooney who sought a reduction in the significantly smaller costs she had been ordered to pay Vardy for the pre-trial hearing.