Wagatha Christie’s casebook
Coleen Rooney files her defence in WAGs battle
SHE was dubbed ‘Wagatha Christie’ after turning detective to unmask the alleged leaker of stories about her to the press.
Now Coleen Rooney has put her case file on record in a legal document in which she stands by her claims that her former friend Rebekah Vardy was the culprit.
Lawyers acting for the wife of former England and Manchester United forward Wayne Rooney filed the 55-page paper in the High Court as her defence against a defamation action by Mrs Vardy, wife of Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy.
The document describes Mrs Vardy, 38, as having an ‘habitual practice of providing private information to journalists’.
It explains how Mrs Rooney, 34, invented fictitious stories about herself and posted them to her Instagram account after blocking all of her followers apart from Mrs Vardy.
The first was a story suggesting that Mrs Rooney, a mother of four boys, was interested in looking at gender selection to have a girl.
In April 2019, she says she posted an image of the back seat of an aeroplane, with the words ‘let’s go and see what this gender selection is all about’.
Four months later on August 14 a Sun reporter contacted Mrs Rooney’s PR for comment and said there was a screenshot of the post. The newspaper then ran a story under the headline ‘Col’s baby girl bid’.
According to Mrs Rooney, the post was marked online as ‘seen’ only by Mrs Vardy. The court papers say it can be inferred that the screenshot was taken by Mrs Vardy. Another story that the document alleges was seen only by Mrs Vardy was about Mrs Rooney’s basement flooding at the family’s £20million home.
Mrs Rooney had published a photo of a bottle of wine with the text: ‘Needed after today… flood in the basement of our new house… when it all seemed to be going so well.’
The Sun published the story less than a week later, written by a journalist with whom the document claims Mrs Vardy had ‘an extremely close relationship’.
Another report was similarly based on a false story planted by Mrs Rooney in which she posted a selfie with hints about her TV career plans.
Screenshot images of the stories were released for the first time yesterday as part of her defence, suggesting she is deterapproved
‘Extremely close relationship’
mined to fight the case despite reports earlier this week that she was keen to avoid it.
It is understood that Mrs Vardy launched the legal action because she wants to clear her name and extract a full public apology. It comes after private mediation failed to end the row.
The defence claims Mrs Vardy had ‘an established history’… of giving journalists private information.
It added : ‘The Claimant sometimes provided this directly, sometimes anonymously (under the pseudonym, “the Secret Wag”, a regular gossip column in The Sun for which she was the source, despite her denying this) and sometimes through third parties who were acting as or condoned by her.’
The row between the pair began a year ago when Mrs Rooney claimed in a tweet that she had restricted access to her Instagram posts in a bid to find out who was leaking details about her personal life.
She then posted: ‘ It’s... Rebekah Vardy’s account.’
Mrs Vardy has vehemently denied the accusations.
A spokesman for Mrs Rooney said last night: ‘Coleen has always been confident of her position, although she takes no pleasure in now having to set out in public court documents the reasons why. It remains a matter of deep regret to her that Rebekah seems determined to persist with court action despite Coleen’s offers of private mediation. Coleen believes the money being spent could be put to much better use in these times.’
Paul Lunt, Mrs Rooney’s solicitor, confirmed she had filed her defence, adding: ‘She remains surprised and disappointed at Mrs Vardy’s decision to initiate these proceedings and to continue to pursue these matters through the courts.’