Rebekah Vardy has brought this case to trial, but under English defamation law the burden of proof is now on Coleen Rooney to prove that her social media post in October 2019 was “substantially true”.
In the post, Rooney accused Vardy of leaking “false stories” about her private life to The Sun newspaper.
Revealing details of a months-long “sting operation”, Rooney said she had shared three fake stories on her personal Instagram account – about travelling to Mexico for a “gender selection” procedure, a planned return to TV, and her basement flooding – but said she changed the settings so that these were only visible to Vardy’s account.
“I have saved and screenshotted all the original stories which clearly show just one person has viewed them,” Rooney wrote. “It’s ………. Rebekah Vardy’s account.”
Months of preliminary hearings – none of which were attended by either Vardy or Rooney – were held ahead of the full trial.
The case first went to court in November 2020, when a judge found that Rooney’s post “clearly identified” Vardy as being “guilty of the serious and consistent breach of trust”.
Mr Justice Warby (now Lord Justice Warby) agreed at that time that Rooney’s post directed guilt at Vardy, rather than at her social media account, and that “the element of suspense introduced by the multiple dots seems to me designed to raise expectations of a dramatic revelation”.
The trial is being held in front of a different judge, Mrs Justice Steyn, and is expected to last seven days.