Coleen Rooney has scored another Wagatha Christie victory as Rebekah Vardy has been ordered to pay around £25k of her legal fees amid ongoing High Court battle.
It's a further blow to the DOI star's long-running £1million libel suit against Coleen, who last week claimed a 2-1 victory in the latest round of their fight after a judge rejected Rebekah's bid to remove substantial parts of Coleen's defense relating to her rival's dealings with The Sun newspaper and its column The Secret Wag.
Judge Mrs Justice Steyn ruled out that such dealings could be a relevant part of her defence of libel action brought by Rebekah following the leaking of Coleen's private Instagram posts to The Sun in 2019, which she denies.
Coleen's glee: Coleen Rooney has scored another Wagatha Christie victory as Rebekah Vardy has been ordered to pay around £25k of her legal fees amid ongoing High Court battle (pictured last week)
Coleen's legal team compared the win to a '2-1 victory in the semi-final' and are increasingly confident going into the next part of the High Court battle in the autumn.
A source said: 'Coleen's legal team will present further evidence concerning Rebekah Vardy's dealings with The Sun and her association The Secret WAG.
'Lots of industry figures have come forward. It could be Pandora's box for Rebekah.'
Last week's judgement was a pre-trial procedural decision on which parts of the defence presented by Coleen will be included in the case if it goes to a full libel trial at the High Court, expected to be in September.
Coleen's legal team compared the win to a '2-1 victory in the semi-final' and are increasingly confident going into the next part of the High Court battle in the autumn (pictured in 2016)
The long-running feud between the high-profile WAGS erupted after Coleen revealed that she had set a trap to see who was responsible for the leaks, which earned her the nickname Wagatha Christie.
Coleen famously wrote: 'I have saved and screenshotted all the original stories which clearly show just one person has viewed them. It's ................ Rebekah Vardy's account.'
Soon after, Rebekah took to social media to deny being the person who had leaked the stories to the press, after Coleen's post went viral.
The long-running feud between the high-profile WAGS erupted after Coleen revealed that she had set a trap to see who was responsible for the leaks, which earned her the nickname Wagatha Christie
Rebekah's team launched a bid last month to have large parts of Coleen's defence in the ongoing libel case struck out.
Rebekah's barrister Hugh Tomlinson QC told Mrs Justice Steyn: 'The purpose of this application is to clear away a mass of irrelevant and peripheral material in order to save time and costs and focus on the main issues in the case.'
But Rebekah's move was branded a 'tactical exercise' to avoid having to disclose matters which will prove Coleen's case is correct, according to her own lawyer David Sherborne.
Coleen's team told the court that the sections which Rebekah was seeking to remove are 'plainly relevant and proportionate' and the argument that leaving them in will substantially increase the costs of the trial is 'seriously overstated and bears no real scrutiny'.
They added: 'Another factor that should be borne in mind is that the Claimant [Rebekah] is seeking to remove what are, no doubt, paragraphs that [she] finds uncomfortable and embarrassing. '
The key issue in Rebekah's pre-trial application to the court concerned the so-called 'TV decisions post' which Coleen put out on Instagram and claims she blocked all her other followers apart from Rebekah from viewing.
In the post, Coleen posted a selfie with text reading 'easing my way back into work!! TV decisions today' in September 2019.
A story reporting her desire to revive her TV career appeared on The Sun's website three days later, Mrs Rooney claims.
However, Mrs Rooney said she 'invented' the story as part of her investigation to discover the source of the leaks and had no intention of entering into more television work.
But the judge
