Rebekah Vardy has been ordered to pay £1.5 million towards Coleen Rooney's legal costs after their libel trial earlier this year.
Rebekah Vardy will pay Coleen Rooney's legal fees
The 40-year-old TV star has been told by the high court that she must cover 90 percent of Rooney's legal fees following their high-profile court case in May, which was dubbed the 'Wagatha Christie' trial.
The judge opted to impose the cost because she was found to have deliberately destroyed evidence relating to the trial, including a series of WhatsApp messages.
Vardy - who is married to former England soccer star Jamie Vardy - has been told that she must pay £800,000 immediately to Rooney, with additional payments adding up to a cumulative cost of around £1.5 million.
The former 'I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!' star will also have to pay her own legal fees, meaning that her personal costs from the trial could exceed £3 million.
Paul Lunt, of Brabners solicitors, who represented Rooney, said that the financial penalty was a reflection of Vardy's "conduct" during the legal proceedings.
In particular, he pointed to Vardy's team losing a phone - which contained potentially vital information - in the North Sea.
He said: "Coleen’s pursuit of that evidence is a major reason why her legal costs increased substantially from the original estimates given to the court long before the start of the trial."
The court case was held after Rooney - the wife of former Manchester United star Wayne Rooney - publicly accused Vardy of leaking stories about her to the media.
Rooney, 36, took to social media to claim that "Rebekah Vardy's account" was behind the publication of three fake stories that she'd deliberately leaked online.
Rooney said in a lengthy Instagram post at the time: "Now I know from certain which account/individual it’s come from.
"I have saved and screenshotted all the original stories which clearly show just one person has viewed them. It’s … Rebekah Vardy’s account. (sic)"
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