Rebekah Vardy appeared to put her latest crushing ‘Wagatha Christie’ court defeat behind her, posting a photograph of herself enjoying a tipple during a skiing holiday.

The 43-year-old uploaded the image from a getaway on the slopes of the French Alps in January last year, holding a minature bottle of port she previously described as ‘a ski essential’.

She uploaded the picture to Instagram hours after being left facing a mega £1.6 million legal bill in her ‘Wagatha Christie’ libel battle with Coleen Rooney.

A High Court judge today ruled that Mrs Rooney’s lawyers did not commit misconduct after being accused of ‘deliberately’ understating some of her costs in the high-profile showdown.

It means Mrs Vardy now faces picking up 90 per cent of Mrs Rooney’s costs, which reached around £1.85 million when the pair were locked in a sensational legal row over claims Mrs Vardy leaked stories to the press.

Today’s ruling is likely to represent a final crushing defeat for 43-year-old mother-of-five, who is married to Leicester City captain and former England striker Jamie Vardy.

A specialist judge last year dismissed Mrs Vardy’s claims that Mrs Rooney’s lawyers commited misconduct, after she accused them of understating her bill to ‘attack the other party’s costs’.

Mrs Vardy challenged the decision, but High Court judge Mr Justice Cavanagh today dismissed the appeal.

Rebekah Vardy, pictured on the French Alps in January 2024 holding a bottle of port – a picture she posted on her Instagram stories hours after today’s court defeat

Coleen Rooney, wearing a protective boot, carried out a ‘sting’ operation to detect who was leaking stories about her to the press

Mrs Vardy, pictured with former England striker husband Jamie Vardy, is now facing an eye-watering £1.6 million bill

Mrs Rooney, pictured with her husband Wayne Rooney outside the Royal Courts of Justice in July 2022, is said to have run up a £1.8 million legal bill 

He said: ‘The appeal must fail on the basis that the judge was entitled to reach the conclusion that he came to.’

In a 38-page ruling, he found there was ‘no valid basis for challenging on appeal the judge’s conclusion’.

He said: ‘The court was not persuaded that the claimant had proved that the defendant’s legal advisers had deliberately misled the court, or the claimant, either by things said or things not said.

In a 38-page ruling, he found there was ‘no valid basis for challenging on appeal the judge’s conclusion’.

‘There had been a misjudgment in the form of a failure to be more transparent about the basis upon which the defendant’s figures for incurred costs had been prepared, but that was as far as it went.

‘The judge was entitled to make the evaluative judgment that this did not amount to unreasonable or improper behaviour, especially as he was so well-placed to form a view about practice in relation to costs.’

It is not yet known whether Mrs Vardy’s latest – and potentially final – appeal will incur any further costs.

Mrs Vardy lost the £3 million libel case after a judge ruled it was ‘substantially true’ that she had leaked Mrs Rooney’s private information to the press.

The judge ordered her to pay the vast majority of Mrs Rooney’s costs.

The post that started it all: Mrs Rooney accused Mrs Vardy’s social media account of leaking stories

Coleen Rooney leaving the Royal Courts of Justice in 2022

Rebekah Vardy denied she was the source of the leaks

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But Mrs Vardy wanted costs reduced by 50 per cent as it was alleged that Mrs Vardy was charging for a lawyer’s stay at a five-star Nobu Hotel.

Mrs Vardy’s reputation was left in tatters in 2022 after a High Court judge dismissed her evidence as ‘evasive or implausible’ and accused her of deliberately deleting WhatsApp messages central to the case.

Her agent was also accused of intentionally dropping her phone in the North Sea.

Mrs Vardy had sued over an accusation she had leaked details of Mrs Rooney’s private life to the press.   

It came after Mrs Rooney – the 39-year-old mother-of-four and wife to former England captain and Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney – had staged an elaborate sting operation to find out who was passing on stories about her private life to The Sun.

The judge, Justice Karen Steyn, said in her ruling that Mrs Rooney had successfully proved her allegation was substantially true.

Mrs Rooney said in a statement after the ruling that she was ‘pleased’ the decision went in her favour but that she ‘never believed’ the case should have gone to court ‘at such expense in times of hardship for so many people when the money could have been far better spent helping others’.

The two women – both former contestants on ‘I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here!’ had been locked in a bitter legal dispute since 2019 after Mrs Rooney took to social media to accuse her fellow WAG Mrs Vardy of leaking stories to the press.

In a now infamous ‘reveal’ post that went viral on social media, Mrs Rooney wrote: ‘It’s……….. Rebekah Vardy’s account.’

The case was given the moniker in honour of the means Mrs Rooney took to deduce who the chief suspect was. 

The High Court has found that Mrs Rooney’s social media post accusing her rival was ‘substantially true’ and that Mrs Vardy ‘knew of, condoned and was actively engaged’ in leaks to the media by her ex-agent Caroline Watt.

And in a damning assessment of Mrs Vardy’s evidence, the judge said ‘significant parts were not credible’ and at times her ‘evidence was manifestly inconsistent with the contemporaneous documentary evidence, evasive or implausible’. By contrast, the judge found that Coleen and her witnesses, including husband Wayne, ‘gave honest, reliable evidence.’

Mrs Justice Steyn also ruled that loss of WhatsApp messages between Mrs Vardy and Ms Watt was ‘deliberate rather than accidental’ – dismissing her agent’s claim that a phone fell into the North Sea when a ship hit a big wave.

In her ruling, the judge said it was ‘likely’ that Mrs 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.’

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 case captivated millions who were left open-mouthed by the evidence including explosive and expletive-filled Whatsapp messages sent by Mrs Vardy as well as Mrs Rooney’s evidence about leaking false stories about her private life to find who was giving them to the tabloids and how her marriage almost fell apart after her husband Wayne was caught drink-driving with a party girl.