Rebekah Vardy v Coleen Rooney

Under Defamation Act 2013, a truth defence succeeds where the defendant proves the substantial truth of the essential sting of the defamatory imputation. The court need not find every detail accurate, but must assess the overall gravity and significance of any inaccuracies. The assessment is highly fact-sensitive. Information derived from private social-media posts need not be confidential or important to satisfy the sting where the publication alleges that private information was regularly disclosed without permission. A public-interest defence requires proof that the statement concerned a matter of public interest, that the defendant believed publication was in the public interest, and that the belief was reasonable in all the circumstances. A belief may be unreasonable where the allegation was published without giving the person accused an opportunity to respond.

Rebekah Vardy brought a libel claim against Coleen Rooney concerning a social-media post accusing Ms Vardy’s account of leaking private Instagram posts to The Sun. Warby J had determined the single meaning as a preliminary issue in [2020] EWHC 3156 (QB). Ms Rooney relied principally on the statutory truth defence and alternatively on the public-interest defence under the Defamation Act 2013.

The trial concerned whether Ms Rooney had proved that Ms Vardy, acting with Caroline Watt, had disclosed information from the private account, and whether the resulting imputation was substantially true. The court also considered whether publication was reasonably believed to be in the public interest.

1. Truth defence. The court applied the principles governing substantial truth under sections 2(1)–(4) of the Defamation Act 2013. The essential or substantial sting had to be proved, but proof of every detail was unnecessary. The assessment required allowance for exaggeration at the margins and proportionality, and was highly fact-sensitive.
2. The evidence established that Ms Vardy was party to the disclosure to The Sun of information from the private Instagram account concerning the Marriage, Birthday, Halloween, Pyjamas, Car Crash, Gender Selection, Babysitting and Flooded Basement Posts. Ms Watt was likely to have passed the information directly to journalists, but Ms Vardy knew of and condoned the conduct and actively contributed by directing Ms Watt to the account, identifying material of possible press interest, supplying screenshots or details, and answering follow-up questions.
3. The court drew adverse inferences from the deliberate deletion or destruction of relevant WhatsApp messages and devices. The missing evidence reinforced the conclusion that the losses were not accidental.
4. The information disclosed was relatively trivial and not deeply confidential. That did not prevent it satisfying the sting of the imputation, which concerned the unauthorised disclosure of information from private posts that Ms Rooney did not want made public. The truth defence therefore succeeded and the claim was dismissed.
5. Public interest defence. The Reveal Post concerned a matter of public interest: the undesirable disclosure to the press of gossip about celebrities’ private lives by trusted individuals. Ms Rooney believed publication was in the public interest. However, that belief was not reasonable in all the circumstances because she published the allegation without first putting it to Ms Vardy or giving her an opportunity to respond. The defence therefore failed, although the finding on truth was dispositive.