The Coleen Rooney advocates were accused of “serious misconduct” legal team in a dispute over the legitimate bills in the ‘Wagatha Christie’ slander.
Ms Vardy lost the high-profile burden in 2022 and was ordered to pay more than £ 1.8m to Ms Rooney, covering 90 percent of her legal costs.
But advocates for the media personality, who is married to Leicester City goal shooter Jamie Vardy, dispute the amount owed, and today in the Supreme Court argue that Ms Rooney deliberately underestimated her costs at an earlier hearing.
During a trial in October last year, Ms. Vardy’s advocates told a judge of the cost that Ms Rooney and her legal team had committed “serious misconduct” by underestimating some of her costs to “attack the cost of the other party”. A judge found that no misconduct was committed.
Jamie Carpenter KC on Monday called on the decision, and said Ms. Rooney “very significantly underestimate” her legal costs by about 40 percent in her budget in a document called “Precendent H” 2021, in written submissions for Ms Vardy.
He said: “Mrs. Rooney hid at all times during the cost of the budget process of Mrs Vardy and the court that the costs in her precedent H were far less than her true costs.”
He continued: “Although the cost of the cost of being critical to Ms Rooney’s attorneys for their lack of transparency, he” held “on balance” and “just” just “that there was no misconduct. It is respected that he was wrong to do so.”
Mr. Carpenter said that a ‘proportional sanction’ for the alleged misconduct would be to limit the amount of Ms Rooney’s legal costs until August 2021 to by Ms. To pay Vardy to £ 220,955.07.
Ms Rooney, whose husband Wayne Rooney is a former captain in England, is opposed to the appeal and her lawyers insist that there is “no tacuable case” of misconduct.
In 2019, she accused Ms. Vardy, a former i’m a celebrity … Get me from here from the participant, that she leaked her private information on social media to the press, which Mrs. Justice Steyn in July 2022 ‘material where’ found.
The judge later made Ms. Vardy recommends paying 90 percent of the cost of Ms Rooney, including an initial payment of £ 800,000.
The trial in October was told that Ms Rooney’s claimed bill – £ 1,833,906,89 – more than three times her “agreed costs of £ 540,779,07”, which said. Carpenter ‘was disproportionate’.
He continued that the earlier “understatement” of some costs “was improper and unreasonable” and “involved to deceive Mrs. Vardy and the court”, which means it should be reduced.
The Ms Rooney’s team argued that the bid was “wrong” and insisted that the budget “was not designed to be an accurate or binding representation” of her total legal costs.
Judge Andrew Gordon business, senior costs, found “in balance and I must say, just” that the legal team of Ms Rooney did not commit violations, and therefore it was “not an appropriate matter” to the amount of money that Mrs. Vardy had to pay, reduce.
He said that although there was a “failure to be transparent”, it was not “sufficiently unreasonable or improper” to form misconduct.
The Mr. Carpenter claimed on Monday that Ms Rooney “had declared 56 percent of the actual level of her incurred costs” in her original budget, which was filed in February 2021, who said she incurred costs of around £ 181,000 when she actually incurred just less than £ 324,000.
He continued that Ms Rooney in revised budgets, submitted for a preliminary hearing in August 2021, claimed that he incurred costs of about £ 221,000, against Ms. Vardy’s cost of just over £ 469,000.
But Mr. Carpenter said Ms Rooney’s full legal bill to the hearing showed that his costs of more than £ 367,000, about 40 percent more, had incurred.
In his written submissions, Benjamin Williams KC told Ms Rooney that her budget “was” properly and correctly completed “and that there was” no task “of misconduct.
He said: “Ms. Rooney’s primary position is that she and her lawyers use the right approach; but even if not correct, it was a reasonable approach.”
He continued: “A party is not expected to certify what they actually spent, but rather the ‘costs it would be reasonable and proportional for my client to enter into this litigation’.”
He added that it would be ‘unfair and disproportionate’ to limit the amount that Mrs. Vardy has to pay.
Mr. Justice Cavanagh and acting senior cost Judge Jason Rowley will give their decision at a later time.
