Matthew Steeples suggests that cool-and-collected Coleen Rooney very much deserved her victory over the mendacious minx Rebekah Vardy; the lesson from the ‘Wagatha Christie’ case is not to take legal action when you know you’ve told porky pies
After judgment was issued in the ‘Wagatha Christie’ case, Rebekah Vardy yesterday was shown to be nothing but a liar. She brought a case that was neither necessary or rationally thought out and in doing so has simply elevated the defendant Coleen Rooney from someone the public laughed at to someone they now respect.
Like Amber Heard in both her British and American cases, Carrie Johnson fan Mrs Vardy has thrown her very own reputation under the bus and will now go down in history as nothing but a stupid, mendacious woman. Her opponent, Mrs Rooney, will now rise and rise and in showing dignity in her response to the verdict proves herself to be the far bigger person.
Speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme this morning, Coleen Rooney’s Liverpool based lawyer Paul Lunt, a partner and head of litigation at a firm named Brabners, analysed the success he achieved for his client and began:
“Coleen had been given my name by somebody and I received an approach. I was given some background details. I was asked for an opinion. I gave my view. I obviously won’t go into what that was. It went from there and she was happy to instruct me and we got on with it.”
Asked why Rooney couldn’t settle at the beginning, Lunt continued:
“That’s a really good question. This is something that has really irked Coleen and me to an extent throughout. As she has said very publicly, this is a case that she never wanted to have. She never wanted this to go to a trial and we did try hard to settle it.”
“The public commentary, the newspaper coverage, the media commentary and a lot of the comments that you’ll see from the general public have often said: ‘Why don’t these two just sort it out?’ and that can be very frustrating because it takes two people to sort things out.”
“And Coleen, and what people often miss in this case and in the commentary is that she is the defendant. She didn’t start the case, she didn’t choose to have it and it was commenced by Becky Vardy.”
“And when you are a defendant in a case, you have really only got very limited choices. You can either defend or you can capitulate and Coleen was not for capitulating, but we did make every effort to see if there was some middle ground that could be found and sadly we didn’t manage to succeed on that front.”
Asked if Rooney considered a financial settlement with Vardy prior to trial, the lawyer responded:
“Well, look I’m not going to go into discussions we had. They were all confidential. Many of them are subject to strict confidentiality arrangements so I can’t discuss them and it would be quite wrong when there are still certain live issues in relation to the case to be getting into that, but, you know, for our part, from our perspective, we had a very open mind in relation to the discussions that we had and we were just trying to find a sensible alternative to going all the way to a trial.”
Questioned as to “what is still to be determined,” Lunt observed:
“Well what’s come out is the judgment on the facts and the rulings on the law as it were. There are what are called consequentials to be dealt with and that will be a separate hearing some time later on in the summer or autumn. But, the issues such as the payment of legal fees, costs and one or two other consequential matters to do with the involvement of journalists and The Sun and other people who were caught up in the wash along the way.”
After the supposed £3 million costs were mentioned by the presenter, Lunt suggested this to be off-the-scale exaggeration and shared:
“Well, I mean the costs budget and these days in High Court litigation, I mean everyone has to produce cost budgets which are public record and so the court had to look at the budgeting, as it does with most High Court litigation these days very early on.”
“The figures there are a matter of record. £3 million is a gross overestimate and doesn’t represent those figures.”
“I can’t speak for what Mrs Rooney has spent on the case and I can only know what I know from my side of things, but I do think that there has been an awful lot of over exaggeration in the media commentary about what those costs are.”
Turning to whether Rooney might next pursue The Sun and other players, the lawyer offered:
“Well, it’s not so much for Mrs Rooney to pursue anything, but The Sun were, or a number of Sun journalists were thought to be brought into the claim by Mrs Vardy in relation to witness evidence and there are certain consequential issues in relation to how that played out that will be between The Sun and Mrs Vardy to resolve.”
“It’s only in relation to the fact that there was an attempt to call various The Sun journalists. It is referred to in the judgment – the witness summons that were issued.”
“The judge, in fact, found that the witness summons were issued essentially improperly in relation to the content of the witness summonses and there may be consequences that flow from that, but, as I say, that’s a matter for The Sun to take up with Mrs Vardy and for the judge to make a determination on.”
“Coleen hasn’t wanted this. She didn’t want any of this to happen. She doesn’t want any compensation, retribution. She’s never wanted any of that. She just wanted the intrusion that she was seeing into her private life to stop and that was her sole aim and her sole focus.”
“She has no remaining objectives. Certainly, she doesn’t have any need for compensation or demands or anything of that nature. She’s just glad that it’s over and that she can get on with her life.”
“We’ve certainly had lots of cameras and paparazzis following us around and I’ve had loads of approaches from all sorts of areas of the media and, you know, if they’re all telling me the truth then there are a lot of documentaries being made. I’ve certainly not engaged with any of them and it would be news to me if Coleen has engaged with any of them.
Following up and contacting The Steeple Times by email, football historian and author of WAG WARS: The Glamour History of Footballers’ Wives Sam Kimberley concluded that “Wags won’t have the same media weight from now on” after this “last hurrah of Waggery.” He told us:
“The eye-watering cost of suing over Rooney’s tweet has set Vardy back £3 million. It shows a high tide in Waggery. Before they waged a war of fashion brands and midriffs, but it is a sign of football coming of age that Wags now wage a war of words and daggers are drawn in court.”
“We will unlikely ever go back to how it was. It is hard to see how any wag can top this, if they ever wanted to. The new Wags seem a lot more serious than their predecessors. It is a worthy end of an era.”
