Voice of London

Rebekah Vardy has won the first stage of her libel case against Coleen Rooney, a high court judge ruled on Friday.

In October 2019, Rooney publicly accused Vardy of leaking information on the former’s private instagram account to tabloid newspapers. Vardy has denied this claim.

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High court justice Warby ruled that Rooney’s Twitter post was aimed at Vardy, rather than her social media account.

A report of the hearing, posted by the Courts and Tribunal Judiciary, said that there was no dispute over whether the comments were defamatory of Vardy. However, Justice Warby agreed that Rooney’s post claimed that Vardy “regularly and frequently abused her status as a trusted follower of Ms Rooney’s personal Instagram account,” rather than the handler of Vardy’s social media accounts.

Rooney’s legal team said: “There are reasonable grounds to suspect that the claimant was responsible for consistently passing on information about the defendant’s private Instagram posts and stories to The Sun newspaper.”

Vardy’s legal team has called the statement an “untrue and unjustified defamatory attack” that was “published and republished to millions of people.”

The pair will have “one final attempt to resolve the matter without the need for a full trial,” the court heard.

Rooney is married to former Manchester United star Wayne Rooney, while Vardy is married to Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy. The footballers were previously England teammates.

Words: Connor O’Halloran | Subbing: William Murray