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A Superior Court judge ruled in favor of Rebekah Vardy in the first stage of her defamation case against Coleen Rooney.
Ms. Rooney had accused Ms. Vardy of leaking stories about her to the media in October of last year.
On Friday, Judge Warby agreed that a post written by Ms. Rooney directed the blame at Ms. Vardy, rather than at her social media account.
Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy have one last chance to solve their problem before taking it for a full test.
A Superior Court judge agreed that Coleen Rooney’s post accusing Rebekah Vardy of leaking stories meant that she “regularly and frequently abused her status as a trusted follower of Ms. Rooney’s personal Instagram account. “.
Judge Warby said its meaning was “substantially the same” as the argued meaning of Ms Vardy, who directed the blame to Ms Vardy, rather than her social media account.
Hugh Tomlinson QC, on behalf of Ms Vardy, told the court that he would seek costs of £ 22,913.50 from Ms Rooney.
The court also heard that both Ms. Vardy and Ms. Rooney will have “one last attempt to resolve the matter without the need for a full trial.”
Ms Rooney’s spokesperson released a statement after the ruling, saying, “After three years of stress and anxiety over the leaks of her private social media account, Coleen is eager to see progress on the real issues, starting with what that Rebekah has to tell the Court. “
At first hearing of his high profile legal battle on Thursday, Judge Warby was asked to determine the “natural and ordinary” meaning of Ms. Rooney’s posts.
Ms. Vardy’s attorneys argued that the significance of Ms. Rooney’s posts was that she had “consistently and repeatedly betrayed the defendant’s trust over several years by leaking the defendant’s private and personal Instagram posts and stories for her publication in The Sun “.
But Ms. Rooney’s legal team says the posts mean “there are reasonable grounds to suspect that the plaintiff was responsible for constantly transmitting information about the defendant’s private Instagram posts and stories to The Sun newspaper.”
Ms. Vardy’s attorney, Hugh Tomlinson QC, said: “The fact that both women are married to professional footballers has led to this action being trivialized in some media as ‘Wag wars’, but the impact on the Mrs. Vardy was not trivial. “
He told the court that Ms. Rooney’s posts were a “false and unjustified defamatory attack” that was “published and republished for millions of people.”
Ms Rooney wrote: “For some years now, someone I trusted to follow me on my personal Instagram account has been constantly informing The Sun newspaper of my private posts and stories.”
He added that he blocked everyone except an Instagram page belonging to Ms Vardy from seeing her Instagram stories, and then “posted a series of fake stories to see if they made it to The Sun” in the space of five months.
Ms. Rooney added dramatically: “I have saved and captured all the original stories that clearly show that only one person has seen them.
“It’s ……………. Rebekah Vardy’s account.”
In her written claim previously filed with the court, Ms Vardy said she was concerned about losing her baby due to stress as she was pregnant at the time.
She also “suffered extreme anguish, pain, anxiety and shame as a result of the publication of the message and the events that followed,” her lawyers allege.
