It’s… over.
Rebekah Vardy has lost her libel case against Coleen Rooney.
As the BBC reports, the case has been dismissed, after Justice Steyn read the verdict today.
In the High Court case, Rebekah Vardy sued Coleen Rooney for libel after the latter claimed that the former was responsible for leaking stories to the press.
Legal costs for both sides are expected to be upwards of £1 million for both sides.
In a now-viral tweet, Rooney claimed that she configured her Instagram story settings so that only Vardy could see them, and posted false stories there as part of a “sting operation”.
Rooney shared stories about flooding in her house, as well as travelling to Mexico to undergo gender selection treatment during pregnancy. These stories ended up being published in the British press.
Vardy denied leaking the stories, while Rooney has said that the claims made in her post were “substantially true”.
This has been a burden in my life for a few years now and finally I have got to the bottom of it…… pic.twitter.com/0YqJAoXuK1
— Coleen Rooney (@ColeenRoo) October 9, 2019
What followed was a highly-publicised libel trial in May, during which Vardy’s lawyer Hugh Tomlinson QC said that Rooney had “failed to produce any evidence” during the trial.
He told the court: “Mrs Vardy’s case is and always has been that she did not leak the information nor did she authorise anyone else to leak.
“She does not know to this day what happened. She does not know where this information came from.”
The barrister added that Vardy suffered “very serious harm to her reputation” as a result of Rooney’s post.
Earlier this week, it was announced that the libel drama between Vardy and Rooney is set to be made into a TV series. Vardy v Rooney: A Courtroom Drama will air on Channel 4, with Oonagh Kearney serving as director.
