The first stage of the 'Wagatha Christie' libel case has gone to Rebekah Vardy this afternoon, when a UK High Court Judge sided with Vardy's legal team, who asserted that Colleen Rooney directed guilt at Vardy and not Vardy's social media account.
If you're out of the loop on all of this, here's a quick primer - or better yet, watch Aisling Bea explain it to Paul Rudd. Basically, Colleen Rooney accused Rebekah Vardy of leaking stories about her and her husband, footballer Wayne Rooney, to the Sun. In order to identify who was leaking stories, Rooney set up a 'canary trap' on Instagram in which she posted fake stories on her private Instagram to individual people who were not aware that they were being shown only one specific story.
In other words, Person A would see an Instagram story on Rooney's account that talked about her house being burgled, Person B) would see an Instagram story on Rooney's account about her car being stolen, and Person C) would see an Instagram story about Wayne Rooney moving football team or something. Whichever story ended up in the Sun was the leaker. It's a classic 'canary trap', which is a regular fixture in spy novels.
Anyway, Rooney identified Rebekah Vardy's Instagram account by this method, which brought about the term 'Wagatha Christie' owing to the fact that they're both WAGs - wives and girlfriends of famous athletes - and the ingenious nature of the discovery.
So, the first stage of the libel case today went to Vardy, whose legal team argued successfully that the guilt was being lain at Rebekah Vardy and not Rebekah Vardy's account. Vardy is suing Rooney for damages in libel, however, a stay of proceedings was agreed today until February, with both legal teams hoping that a deal can be worked out that will prevent it going to full trial.
Rooney's legal team have been arguing that Vardy was "responsible for consistently passing on information about the defendant’s private Instagram posts and stories to The Sun," while Vardy's legal team said in the most recent hearing that Rooney's post about Vardy was an "untrue and unjustified defamatory attack."
