Rebakah Vardy must pay £1.8m in legal bill over the Wagatha Christie saga after a High Court judge threw out her claims that Coleen Rooney’s lawyers had inflated their costs.

In a damning judgement it was ruled that Coleen lawyers did not commit misconduct after being accused of “deliberately” understating some of her costs in her high-profile libel battle with Rebekah Vardy. Rebekah unsuccessfully sued Mrs Rooney in 2022, with the two now in further dispute over how much she should pay in legal costs as a result. In October last year, a specialist costs judge ruled Mrs Rooney’s lawyers did not commit misconduct after they were accused by Mrs Vardy’s legal team of understating some of her costs.

Mrs Vardy appealed against the decision last month, claiming it constituted “serious misconduct”, while Mrs Rooney’s lawyers claimed the challenge was “misconceived”. In a ruling this morning High Court judge Mr Justice Cavanagh dismissed the appeal. He said: “The appeal must fail on the basis that the judge was entitled to reach the conclusion that he came to.”

Rebekah, 42, and her barrister previously accused The I'm A Celeb star, 38, of “serious misconduct” by understating her legal fees, after the wife of Premier League ace Jamie Vardy was ordered to foot the £1.8M bill.

Coleen, who is married to footballer Wayne Rooney, accused her rival in 2019 of sharing her private information to the press on social media - which was found to be “substantially true”.

Rebekah was then ordered to pay 90% of Coleen's legal bills, and after her attempts in October to slash the amount was denied.

Last month her team has returned to court in a bid to appeal the decision claiming Coleen grossly inflated the amount of her costs, which was understood to include £2,000 for her solicitor's stay at London's five-star Nobu Hotel.

Rebekah's barrister claimed that Coleen and her team “very substantially understated” the fees in a bid to “attack the other party's costs”.

Jamie Carpenter KC said Coleen's team understated the amount by 40% which they alleged could be classed as “serious misconduct”.

He suggested a “proportionate sanction” would be set, which would limit the amount his client would have to pay to £220,955.

He told the judge: “Although the costs judge was critical of Mrs Rooney's lawyers for their lack of transparency, he held “on balance” and “only just” that there was no misconduct. It is respectfully submitted that he was wrong to do so”.

But Coleen's barrister Benjamin Williams KC insisted there was “no tenable case” for misconduct and insisted the budget was “properly and correctly completed”.

He said: “Mrs Rooney's primary position is that, in this, she and her solicitors were adopting the right approach; but even if this is not correct, it was a reasonable approach.”

In October 2022, the judge ordered Rebekah to pay 90% of her fellow WAG's legal costs, with an initial £800,000 to be handed over.

Rebekah's lawyers attempted to argue that the opposing legal team’s estimate of their costs was deliberately misleading, and that it amounted to a deliberate deception of both Vardy’s side and of the court.

Coleen's representatives branded it “frankly outrageous” to accuse them of dishonesty.

A judge ruled in 2022 that Coleen's accusations that Rebekah had leaked stories on her to The Sun were substantially true.

Rebekah always denied any wrongdoing, but she was described as an “untrustworthy witness” who was likely to have destroyed potentially crucial evidence on purpose in Mrs Justice Steyn's devastating judgement on the case.

The after-shocks of the bombshell trial has raged on with the two parties wrangling over legal costs.

In May 2024, Senior judge Andrew Gordon-Saker reportedly told Coleen and Rebekah's lawyers to come to an agreement, warning: “This could go on and on”.

In 2023 the sum of the legal fees was still to be assessed but was estimated to be around £500,000 – but now the final libel bill is more than three times higher than Rebekah was expecting.