4 Christie Court

[Mirtha Hinrichs]

In 2019, Rooney announced on Twitter that the Instagram account that was leaking the posts from her private Instagram account to the British newspaper The Sun was "Rebekah Vardy's account". In 2020, Vardy sued Rooney for libel, and the case came to trial in London in May 2022. On 29 July 2022, the court dismissed Vardy's claim on the basis that Rooney's statements were substantially true. Vardy was ordered to pay a substantial proportion of Rooney's legal expenses, which, together with her own legal costs, have been estimated to total 3 million.

The dispute and trial attracted significant media attention, in part because Vardy and Rooney are "WAGs", an acronym applied by the British media to the wives and girlfriends of prominent British footballers. The case acquired its popular name, a portmanteau of WAG and the name of the whodunnit fiction writer Agatha Christie, because of the steps taken by Rooney to investigate the source of the leaks.

In 2019, Coleen Rooney, the wife of the footballer Wayne Rooney, suspected that posts from her private Instagram account were being leaked to The Sun, a British tabloid newspaper that regularly publishes celebrity stories.[1] To determine the source of the stories, Rooney posted fabricated stories and changed the settings of her Instagram so that Rebekah Vardy (the wife of footballer Jamie Vardy), whom she suspected to be the source of the leaks, was the only one who could view them.[1] The Sun published these stories, which included claims that the basement of Rooney's house had flooded, that Rooney had visited Mexico to "make a baby girl", and that Rooney had planned to appear on Strictly Come Dancing.[2][3]

In June 2020, Vardy commenced action in the English High Court to sue Rooney for defamation.[7] Defamation and libel cases are often not brought to the High Court; lawyers often advise against taking such cases to court because the reputational loss for the complainant is often high.[8] At a preliminary High Court hearing on 19 November 2020, Mr. Justice Warby found Rooney had used defamatory words about Vardy. Neither Rooney nor Vardy were at the court.[9]

Vardy argued that the accusation over her Instagram account was false. Following the earlier ruling, it was Rooney's onus to prove Vardy was responsible for leaking stories to The Sun or to convince the judge that publication of the allegation was in the public interest.[10] Rooney testified that she offered several out-of-court settlements.[11]

The trial commenced on 10 May 2022.[5][12] During the proceedings, Rooney requested documents related to The Sun publisher News Group Newspapers and four The Sun journalists. The judge Mrs. Justice Steyn allowed Vardy to use written summaries from these journalists as part of the case.[13]

The judge also asked for the mobile phones of Vardy and her agent Caroline Watt to be searched. Watt said she had accidentally dropped her phone into the North Sea during a family holiday in Scotland.[14][15][16] Vardy's copy of the messages were said to have been lost during a failed backup when Vardy's technology expert "[forgot] the password which he used to encrypt the material".[17] Rooney's lawyer David Sherborne said these were attempts to conceal incriminating evidence.[18][19] Rooney's lawyers also cited the Armory v Delamirie case of 1722, which set a precedent stating that any deliberately missing evidence in a case should be assumed to be of the highest possible value, arguing that this also applies to electronic communications.[20]

Rooney alleged Vardy was the source of information for The Sun on Sunday's "Secret Wag" feature, an anonymous column that discussed the private lives of others.[21][22] Sherborne questioned Vardy about her history of leaking information to the tabloid press, quoting from a 2004 interview in which Vardy detailed a sexual encounter with singer Peter Andre.[23][24] Vardy apologised, saying her former husband had forced her to participate in the interview[25] and that her words had been misrepresented.[26] The trial ended on 19 May 2022.[27]

On 29 July, Mrs. Justice Steyn ruled in favour of Rooney. Steyn said that Vardy had regularly passed information about Rooney to the press, was critical of missing evidence from Vardy and called her evidence "manifestly inconsistent with the contemporaneous documentary evidence, evasive or implausible" on "many occasions".[1] Steyn also said The Sun on Sunday's "Secret Wag" column "is highly likely ... [to have been] a journalistic construct rather than a person", and that "the evidence connecting Ms Vardy to this column is thin".[28][29]

Vardy faced estimated legal costs of approximately 3 million.[30] At a subsequent hearing, Mrs. Justice Steyn ordered Vardy to pay 90% of Rooney's costs, with the first installment assessed at 800,000, to be paid by mid-November 2022.[31] The full amount was expected to be approximately 1,500,000.[32] Vardy's legal costs were estimated to be similar, meaning the libel case may have cost her more than 3 million in total.[31]

After the trial, Vardy said that she was "extremely sad and disappointed at the decision" and that she had been the subject of "vile abuse" since the trial began.[34] She told Kate McCann of TalkTV that the media coverage of the case had been sexist and misogynistic,[35] and she was later said to be experiencing panic attacks and post-traumatic stress as a result of the trial.[36] In 2023 it was reported that Vardy had trademarked the term Wagatha Christie.[37]

In a press statement after the trial, Rooney said that she was pleased but did not believe the case should have gone to court when the money could have been better spent elsewhere.[38] Rooney subsequently described her experience of the litigation as "horrible". She acknowledged that Vardy was "obviously going through it" as a result of the case, but said she could not understand why Vardy had put herself in that position. She has also said she would never forgive Vardy.[39]

The trial received international media coverage.[28] Helen Lewis, a writer for the American magazine The Atlantic, called the case "the most ill-advised defamation case" since Oscar Wilde's dispute with the Marquess of Queensberry. Lewis wrote that the trial represented "a clash between different ideas of celebrity", with Rooney guarding her privacy and Vardy "an avatar of a made-for-Instagram world, in which you are a fool if you do not monetise your personal life".[40] The Guardian commented that the judgment had left Vardy's reputation "in tatters".[41]

The trial has been dramatised in stage and television adaptations. Channel 4 broadcast its dramatisation, Vardy v Rooney: A Courtroom Drama, in December 2022.[42] Vardy v Rooney: The Wagatha Christie Trial, a verbatim dramatisation of the trial, was staged at Wyndham's Theatre in London's West End between November 2022 and January 2023. In 2024 it was nominated for the Nol Coward Olivier Award.[43] Lucy May Barker and Laura Dos Santos played Vardy and Rooney.[44] A two-part TV documentary, Vardy vs Rooney: The Wagatha Trial, was aired in November 2022 on Discovery+.[45]

Democrats accused Christie of changing the partisan balance of the court, suggesting that Kwon had been a Republican before registering as an independent. Sweeney was angered by the lack of South Jersey nominees.

Fernandez-Vina comes up for reappointment in late 2020 and Gov. Phil Murphy has hinted that he intends to continue the tradition of keeping sitting justices. He turns 70 in 2022, and Murphy will get a chance to name his replacement if he wins re-election to a second term.

The 59-year-old Solomon came with a strong political resume: he started out as a councilman in Haddon Heights, won race for Camden County freeholder as a Republican, won a State Assembly seat in a 1992 special election convention in the 6th district, and ran for Congress against Rep. Rob Andrews later that year.

The case, heard at the High Court in May, was a media sensation. The women are celebrities in their own right, and both are married to famous footballers: Vardy to Leicester City and England striker Jamie Vardy, Rooney to former Manchester United and England star Wayne Rooney.

The case caused a media frenzy during seven days of hearings as the two women went to court, along with their husbands, despite being urged by judges and legal experts to settle. The case has reportedly cost each side more than 1 million pounds ($1.2 million) in legal fees.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's latest attempt to get on the Maine Republican presidential primary ballot failed Thursday after his campaign tried to recover from a surprising setback in the Super Tuesday state.

Earlier this month, the Maine Secretary of State's Office said that Christie's campaign fell short of the necessary number of certified signatures needed from Maine voters to qualify for the state's Republican presidential primary.

"We appreciate that the court upheld the integrity of Maine's well-established ballot access requirements," Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows said in a statement. "Every candidate, including presidential candidates, must follow the law to qualify for the ballot. We are glad that the court recognized that Maine law is workable and fair to all."

Earlier this month, Maine Director of Elections Heidi M. Peckham said in a letter that Christie's campaign had only turned in 844 of the minimum 2,000 certified signatures required to appear on the ballot.

According to the decision by Maine Superior Court Justice Julia M. Lipez, Christie "did not separate petition forms by town, as instructed by the Secretary, or, in the alternative, give himself sufficient time to bring those multi-town signature sheets to the relevant municipalities before the November 20 deadline."

The news is the latest trouble for the Christie campaign as he faces pressure to drop out of the race and help consolidate support around an alternative candidate to former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner in the GOP race. Christie's strategy has centered around going all in on the Jan. 23 New Hampshire primary. His campaign has maintained he has a path after the contest, but the struggles in Maine threaten to undercut that tone.

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