Mrs. Vardy was mandated to reimburse Mrs. Rooney for 90% of her legal fees following the case’s defeat.
The judge decided during the trial that Mrs. Vardy’s disclosure of Mrs. Rooney’s personal information to the media was “substantially true”.
The two parties’ barristers have returned to the High Court this week to continue their legal battle over costs, which were initially estimated to be £540,779 but have now exceeded that amount by more than three times, coming in at £1.8 million.
Attorneys for Mrs. Vardy filed a new lawsuit, claiming that Mrs. Rooney is not entitled to £120,000 in costs and that her attorneys engaged in unethical behavior.
Disputes were raised over costs for one of Mrs Rooney’s lawyers, with claims that they had stayed at a luxury hotel and run up a large mini-bar bill.
But in a ruling on Tuesday, senior costs judge Andrew Gordon-Saker dismissed a number of Mrs Vardy’s claims and ruled that Mrs Rooney’s team had not committed any misconduct, and therefore it was “not an appropriate case” to reduce the amount Mrs Vardy had to pay.
He said that while there was a “failure to be transparent”, it was not “sufficiently unreasonable or improper” to constitute misconduct.
However, it is likely that Mrs. Vardy will pay less than the estimated £1.6m she was instructed to pay because the case is set to return to court next year for a line-by-line assessment, with some rulings yet to be made.
