Rebekah Vardy has left her own libel trial before end of court today………due to an appointment.
The WAG – who is married to Leicester footballer Jamie Vardy – is suing for libel after Rooney accused her of leaking ‘false stories’ about her private life in October 2019 following a months-long ‘sting operation’ which saw Rooney dubbed ‘Wagatha Christie’.
Vardy denies the allegations and has sued the fellow footballer’s wife over the ‘untrue and unjustified defamatory attack’.
However after a day of evidence by Rooney, as well as PR Rachel Monk, and Harpreet Robertson, a former ticketing manager and family liaison officer for the Association, it was revealed Vardy had to leave a little earlier during a short break in the afternoon.
‘Mrs Vardy has had to leave for an appointment,’ her barrister Hugh Tomlinson QC told the court.
He added she meant no disrespect to the court.
Following her exit, Rooney’s brother Joe McLoughlin – who runs her public Instagram account, on which the allegations were first released – took to the witness stand.
Earlier today, Rooney, who is defending the claim on the basis her post was ‘substantially true’ and in the public interest, said she became convinced as time went on that Vardy had something to do with the leaks to the press because it was ‘continuous for so long’.
She denied having ‘attacked’ Vardy with the reveal post, adding: ‘I have not used vicious words, I could have done it a lot worse … I thought that was an OK way of putting it really.’
Mr Tomlinson said that, during the course of Rooney’s defence to the libel claim, Vardy has further been accused of betraying her agent Caroline Watt, of destroying evidence and deleting messages, and that in light of the evidence it is possible Watt was responsible for the leaks.
Rooney said the evidence ‘just adds’ to what she already had from her investigation, adding: ‘I feel that it could have been someone else but I do believe that Mrs Vardy knew what was going on, that there was information getting passed from her account to The Sun newspaper.’
She added: ‘If she (Watt) was a friend, I would have thought she would have kept her witness statement in and supported Mrs Vardy.’
Tomlinson concluded his cross examination by saying: ‘The truth is, Mrs Rooney, you don’t know (who was responsible for the leaks)’, to which she replied: ‘I believe all the evidence pointed the finger (and) that Mrs Vardy knew exactly what was going on with her account.’
The fake stories Rooney planted on her Instagram during the sting operation featured her travelling to Mexico for a ‘gender selection’ procedure, her planning to return to TV, and the basement flooding at her home.
In the post on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, she 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.’
The trial is expected to last seven days.
