Judge reveals winner of Wagatha libel trial: It’s………..not Rebekah Vardy

metro.co.uk:

High Court libel battle, dubbed Wagatha Christie, against Coleen Rooney.After a highly-publicised libel trial in May, which saw both Rebekah Vardy, 40, and Coolen Rooney, 36, attend the Royal Courts of Justice in London, joined by their husbands Jaime Vardy, 35, and Wayne Rooney, 36, judge Mrs Justice Steyn has published her ruling.The legal battle between the pair came after Rooney accused Vardy of leaking ‘false stories’ about her private life in October 2019 following a months-long ‘sting operation’ which saw Rooney dubbed ‘Wagatha Christie’.

Vardy vehemently denied the claims and sued for libel.In her ruling, Justice Steyn said it was ‘likely’ that 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.’The battle centred on the now infamous line Rooney used in October 2019 to reveal the account allegedly responsible for the leaks: ‘I have saved and screenshotted all the original stories which clearly show just one person has viewed them.‘It’s ………..