Rebekah Vardy v Coleen Rooney
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mrs Justice Steyn,Mrs Justice Steyn DBE |
| Judgment Date | 29 July 2022 |
| Neutral Citation | [2022] EWHC 2017 (QB) |
| Docket Number | Case No: QB-2020-002028 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
[2022] EWHC 2017 (QB)
THE HON. Mrs Justice Steyn DBE
Case No: QB-2020-002028
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS LIST
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Hugh Tomlinson QC and Sara Mansoori QC (instructed by Kingsley Napley LLP) for the Claimant
David Sherborne and Ben Hamer (instructed by Brabners LLP) for the Defendant
Hearing dates: 10–17 May and 19 May 2022
Approved Judgment
I direct that no official shorthand note shall be taken of this Judgment and that copies of this version as handed down may be treated as authentic.
THE HON. Mrs Justice Steyn DBE
This judgment will be handed down by the Judge remotely by circulation to the parties' representatives by email and release to The National Archives. The date and time for hand-down is deemed to be 12.00 PM on Friday 29th July 2022
Index
| Section | Paragraphs | ||
| A. | Introduction | 1–9 | |
| B. | The case in outline | 10–14 | |
| C. | Procedural history | 15–26 | |
| D. | The law | 27–36 | |
| The truth defence | 28–31 | ||
| The public interest defence | 32–36 | ||
| E. | Overview of the evidence | 37–73 | |
| Witness evidence on behalf of the claimant | 37–48 | ||
| Witness evidence on behalf of the defendant | 49–52 | ||
| Expert evidence | 53–54 | ||
| Availability of — and gaps in — the documentary evidence | 55–74 | ||
| F. | Chronological review of the evidence | 75–284 | |
| News of the World article — March 2004 | 75–77 | ||
| Ms Vardy joined FRP — April 2016 | 78–79 | ||
| UEFA Euro 2016 — June 2016 | 80–91 | ||
| Further articles — December 2016 to April 2017 | 92–94 | ||
| Access to the Private Instagram Account | 95–99 | ||
| The Marriage Post — September 2017 | 100–114 | ||
| The Birthday, Halloween and Pyjamas Posts — 24 October to 1 November 2017 | 115–132 | ||
| Photoshopped pictures — 9 November 2017 | 133–139 | ||
| Riyad Mahrez — 1 February 2018 | 140–144 | ||
| Further interviews and photoshoots for The Sun – August 2017 to June 2018 | 145 | ||
| World Cup 2018 — dinner in St Petersburg on 26 June 2018 | 146–157 | ||
| Mrs F – 5 September 2018 | 158–160 | ||
| Further interviews with journalists from The Sun | 161 | ||
| The Car Crash Post — January 2019 | 162–182 | ||
| Ms Rooney's decision to remove Ms Vardy as a follower – February 2019 | 183–203 | ||
| The Babysitter Enquiry — March 2019 | 204–210 | ||
| The Sting Operation Part I and the Gender Selection Post – April 2019 | 211–226 | ||
| Danny Drinkwater — 8 April 2019 | 227–234 | ||
| Maldives stuff—6 August 2019 | 235–242 | ||
| The Difficult Year Post — August 2019 | 243–245 | ||
| The Soho House Posts — August 2019 | 246–251 | ||
| The Sting Operation Part II 15 August to 9 October 2019 | 252–268 | ||
| “The Secret Wag” column — September to December 2019 | 269–275 | ||
| The Flooded Basement Post — October 2019 | 276–281 | ||
| Exchanges following the Reveal Post | 282–284 | ||
| G. | Truth defence: decision | 285–287 | |
| H. | Public interest defence: decision | 288–289 | |
| I. | Conclusion | 290 |
A. Introduction
This judgment is given following a seven day trial of this libel claim which is brought by the claimant, Ms Rebekah Vardy, against the defendant, Ms Coleen Rooney. The claimant and the defendant are well-known media and television personalities. They are both married to former England footballers, namely, Mr Jamie Vardy and Mr Wayne Rooney, respectively.
The claim is brought in respect of a post published by Ms Rooney on 9 October 2019 (‘the Reveal Post’) on Twitter, Facebook and her public Instagram account. The words complained of are these:
“For a few years now someone who I trusted to follow me on my personal Instagram account has been consistently informing The SUN newspaper of my private posts and stories.
There has been so much information given to them about me, my friends and my family — all without my permission or knowledge.
After a long time of trying to figure out who it could be, for various reasons, I had a suspicion.
To try and prove this, I came up with an idea. I blocked everyone from viewing my Instagram stories except ONE account. (Those on my private account must have been wondering why I haven't had stories on there for a while.)
Over the past five months I have posted a series of false stories to see if they made their way into the Sun newspaper. And you know what, they did! The story about gender selection in Mexico, the story about returning to TV and then the latest story about the basement flooding in my new house.
It's been tough keeping it to myself and not making any comment at all, especially when the stories have been leaked, however I had to. Now I know for certain which account / individual it's come from.
I have saved and screenshotted all the original stories which clearly show just one person has viewed them.
It's……….Rebekah Vardy's account.”
On Twitter and Facebook the above words were published in the form of an image preceded by introductory words stating,
“This has been a burden in my life for a few years now and finally I have got to the bottom of it…….”.
The single, natural and ordinary meaning of the words complained of that would be conveyed to the hypothetical ‘ordinary reasonable reader’ was determined as a preliminary issue by Warby J (as he then was), following a hearing on 19 November 2020: Vardy v Rooney [2020] EWHC 3156 (QB) (‘the single meaning’). The single meaning is:
“Over a period of years Ms Vardy had regularly and frequently abused her status as a trusted follower of Ms Rooney's personal Instagram account by secretly informing The Sun newspaper of Ms Rooney's private posts and stories, thereby making public without Ms Rooney's permission a great deal of information about Ms Rooney, her friends and family which she did not want made public.”
Warby J rejected the defendant's contention, based mainly on the use of the word “account”, that the Post bore a less serious meaning, observing at [29]:
“…The message was not that Ms Vardy might or might not be the wrongdoer. The reader was not being told that the ‘one person’ could be someone else, who had in some way gained access to Ms Vardy's account and then misused it in order to misuse Ms Rooney's personal information. If that had been the message, the ordinary reader would expect to see a good deal more than the word ‘account’. In the context of the post as a whole, that word would be read as just another way of identifying Rebekah Vardy as the wrongdoer.”
There is no dispute that the words complained of are defamatory of Ms Vardy i.e. the common law test, that the meaning or imputation would tend to have a substantially adverse effect on the way that right-thinking members of society generally would treat the claimant, is met.
Nor is there any dispute that the condition set out in s.1 of the Defamation Act 2013 (‘the 2013 Act’), that the “publication has caused or is likely to cause serious harm to the reputation of the claimant”, is met. Although the defendant's pleaded position contains a denial that publication of the Reveal Post caused or is likely to cause serious harm to Ms Vardy's reputation, the issue was conceded in the defendant's skeleton argument filed two working days before the trial. That was a sensible and realistic (albeit rather late) concession, given the compelling evidence of harm, the inherent tendency of the words and the extent of publication. Ms Rooney's public Instagram account has around 900,000 followers; her Twitter account has around 1,200,000 followers; and her Facebook account has about 950,000 followers. The Post was ‘liked’ on Instagram 193,284 times and on Twitter 300,000 times. There can be no doubt that the Post was published to vast numbers of people. On Twitter alone, by 14 October 2021, the activity for the Post was recorded as 30,872,531 impressions (i.e. “times people saw this Tweet on Twitter”) and 11,500,157 engagements (i.e. “times people interacted with this Tweet”).
Some members of the public have responded to the Reveal Post by subjecting Ms Vardy to vile abuse, including messages wishing her, her family, and even her (then unborn) baby, ill in the most awful terms. Nothing of which Ms Vardy has been accused, nor any of the findings in this judgment, provide any justification or excuse for subjecting her or her family, or any other person involved in this case, to such vitriol.
Given the concession that the Post is defamatory and has caused serious harm to Ms Vardy's reputation, the questions for determination are whether Ms Rooney has established a defence to the claim and, if not, the appropriate quantum of damages. Ms Rooney relies on two statutory defences, namely the defence of truth and the defence of publication on a matter of public interest; but it is common ground that the central issue is whether Ms Rooney has proved the single meaning is substantially true.
B. The case in outline
In short, Ms Rooney's primary defence is based on the allegation that the following articles resulted from leaks by Ms Vardy, using her agent Ms Caroline Watt as a conduit, of information Ms Rooney posted on her private Instagram account (‘the Private Instagram Account’):
i) ‘The Marriage Article’: An article first published in The Sun Online on 3 September 2017 at 22.22, under the headline “ Wayne Rooney fears his marriage is over as pregnant wife Coleen storms out of their £4m mansion — and takes the kids with her”. The byline names the writers as Richard Moriarty and Simon Boyle. It is clear from the evidence provided in support of Mr Boyle's application to set aside a witness summons served on him by the claimant, and from the seventh witness statement of the...
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