Rebekah Vardy will not appeal the High Court ruling which saw her lose the £3million Wagatha Christie libel battle against Coleen Rooney.
The WAG – who is married to Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, 35 – sued Coleen, 36, for libel after she accused Rebekah of leaking ‘false stories’ to the media, with a judge ruling against Rebekah at the High Court.
A source told The Sun: ‘It’s all over and Becky wants to move on. She is extremely frustrated with lawyers and the legal process so hell would freeze over before she wanted to go back into court.
‘At the moment she is enjoying being a mother, and a wife. She was pregnant with her youngest child when this whole thing blew up and she is two now.
‘So Becky is enjoying spending time with her and her other children — and does not want another legal fight to get in the way.’
It was previously reported that Rebekah may appeal against the bombshell Wagatha Christie ruling after she declared herself ‘devastated’ and branded the decision ‘unjust’ and ‘wrong’.
Sources close to Rebekah said that ‘nothing has been ruled out’ and that lawyers were still ‘combing over’ the 75-page judgment as they searched for possible grounds to take Coleen back to court.
Rebekah Vardy will not appeal the High Court ruling which saw her lose the £3million Wagatha Christie libel battle against Coleen Rooney
The 40-year-old’s reputation is in tatters after she scored one of the worst own goals in British legal history when a High Court judge dismissed her evidence as ‘evasive or implausible’ and accused her of deliberately deleting WhatsApp messages central to the case. Her agent was also accused of intentionally dropping her phone in the North Sea.
Mrs Vardy and her footballer husband have been left with a £3million legal bill after Mrs Justice Steyn ruled in favour of Mrs Rooney in a judgment that said swathes of her evidence given under oath had been ‘manifestly inconsistent’, ‘not credible’ and needed to be treated with ‘very considerable caution’.
Rebekah said: ‘I am extremely sad and disappointed at the decision that the judge has reached. It is not the result that I had expected, nor believe was just. I brought this action to vindicate my reputation and am devastated by the judge’s finding.
‘The judge accepted that publication of Coleen’s post was not in the ‘public interest’ and she also rejected her claim that I was the ‘Secret Wag’. But as for the rest of her judgement, she got it wrong and this is something I cannot accept.’
She added: ‘The case is over. I want to thank everyone who has supported me.’
Vardy had sued over an accusation she had leaked details of her private life to the press. It came after Mrs Rooney had staged an elaborate sting operation to find out who was passing on stories about her private life to The Sun.
The judge, Justice Karen Steyn, said in her ruling that Coleen had successfully proved her allegation was substantially true.
Mrs Rooney laid into the £3million cost of the disastrous Wagatha Christie libel brought by Mrs Vardy who obdurately pursued the own goal High Court battle that has destroyed her reputation despite her rival trying to settle the case at least four times.
Rebekah Vardy’s reputation lies in tatters after she sensationally lost the ‘Wagatha Christie’ libel case with Coleen Rooney, who said the case was a waste of money and Vardy should never have taken it to court
Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy together in 2016. The WAGs have ended up in court in the libel trial of the year and Mrs Vardy’s reputation is in tatters after bringing the case and losing
Coleen said in a statement that she was ‘pleased’ the ruling went in her favour but that she ‘never believed’ the case should have gone to court ‘at such expense in times of hardship for so many people when the money could have been far better spent helping others’.
Mrs Rooney said: ‘It was not a case I ever sought or wanted. I never believed it should have gone to court at such expense in times of hardship for so many people when the money could have been far better spent helping others.
‘Both before and after my social media posts in October 2019, I made every effort to avoid the need for such a drawn out and public court case. All my attempts to do so were knocked back by Mrs (Rebekah) Vardy.
‘This left me with no alternative but to go through with the case to defend myself and to end the repeated leaking of my private information to The Sun.
‘These leaks from my private Instagram account began in 2017. They continued for almost two years, intruding on my privacy and that of my family. Although I bear Mrs Vardy no ill-will, today’s judgment makes clear that I was right in what I said in my posts of October 2019.
‘Finally, I would like to thank all of my legal team, my family, friends and everyone who supported me, including the public, through this difficult and stressful time.’
The wife of Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy relentlessly pursued the case against her Wag rival Coleen Rooney for nearly three years after being accused of leaking private stories about Coleen and her family to The Sun newspaper.
The bombshell verdict from Court 13 of the High Court was handed down remotely online by Mrs Justice Steyn just over two months after the hearing in May. Vardy’s failed libel suit has been branded the most ill-advised in history.
Mrs Vardy had insisted on a full trial in the glare of the international media – and lost.
Media litigator Matthew Dando, a partner at Wiggin LLP, told MailOnline: ‘It is a devastating and damning judgment for Rebekah Vardy that leaves her credibility in tatters. It is hard to imagine a stronger judicial condemnation of her evidence.
‘It will do real damage to Rebekah Vardy’s finances too as she will have to pay Coleen Rooney’s legal costs as well as her own.
‘It is hard to imagine Rebekah Vardy emerging from this with anything less than a fatal wound to her character and credibility’.
The High Court has found that Mrs Rooney’s social media post accusing her rival was ‘substantially true’ and that Mrs Vardy ‘knew of, condoned and was actively engaged’ in leaks to the media by her ex-agent Caroline Watt.
And in a damning assessment of Mrs Vardy’s evidence, the judge said ‘significant parts were not credible’ and at times her ‘evidence was manifestly inconsistent with the contemporaneous documentary evidence, evasive or implausible’. By contrast, the judge found that Coleen and her witnesses, including husband Wayne, ‘gave honest, reliable evidence.’
Mrs Justice Steyn also ruled that loss of WhatsApp messages between Mrs Vardy and Ms Watt was ‘deliberate rather than accidental’ – dismissing her agent’s claim that a phone fell into the North Sea when a ship hit a big wave.
In her ruling, the judge said it was ‘likely’ that Mrs Vardy’s agent at the time, Caroline Watt, ‘undertook the direct act’ of passing the information to The Sun.
But she added: ‘Nonetheless, the evidence … clearly shows, in my view, that Mrs Vardy knew of and condoned this behaviour, actively engaging in it by directing Ms Watt to the private Instagram account, sending her screenshots of Mrs Rooney’s posts, drawing attention to items of potential interest to the press, and answering additional queries raised by the press via Ms Watt.
The judge added: ‘In my judgment, the conclusions that I have reached as to the extent to which the claimant engaged in disclosing to The Sun information to which she only had access as a permitted follower of an Instagram account which she knew, and Mrs Rooney repeatedly asserted, was private, suffice to show the single meaning is substantially true.’
For a week in May, the case captivated millions who were left open-mouthed by the evidence including explosive and expletive-filled Whatsapp messages sent by Ms Vardy as well as Coleen’s evidence about leaking false stories about her private life to find who was giving them to the tabloids and how her marriage almost fell apart after her husband Wayne was caught drink-driving with a party girl.
Coleen Rooney out and about on the day of the final result of the Wagatha Christie trial in Cheshire
The post that accused Rebekah Vardy’s social media account of leaking stories. It sparked a £3million legal battle that Mrs Rooney has won after the judge agreed it was ‘substantially true’ and therefore not libellous
Wagatha Christie judgment in full