Rebekah Vardy has won the first round of her High Court battle with Coleen Rooney.
The judge for the court case, Mr Justice Warby, today sided with Vardy as he ruled on last year's social media post and its implications on the footballer's wife.
Last year, Rooney took to Insta stories to claim she'd found the culprit responsible for media leaks from her private Instagram account.
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In a now infamous post, she wrote: "It's.......... Rebekah Vardy's account."
But Vardy denied all accusations and is now suing Rooney for libel.
Mr Justice Warby today ruled that the 'natural and ordinary' meaning of Rooney's post was that Vardy had 'frequently abused her status' as a trusted follower of Rooney's Instagram account, arguing that it 'clearly identified' Vardy has being guilty of a serious breach of trust.
But Vardy's lawyers argued that Rooney had 'consistently and repeatedly betrayed the defendant's trust over several years by leaking the defendant's private and personal Instagram posts and stories for publication in The Sun'.
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In today's pre-trial, Mr Justice Warby concluded that the meaning behind Rooney's post was that Vardy had 'regularly and frequently abused her status as a trusted follower of Ms Rooney's personal Instagram account by secretly informing The Sun newspaper of Ms Rooney's private posts and stories, thereby making public without Ms Rooney's permission a great deal of information about Ms Rooney, her friends and family which she did not want made public'.
He described this as 'substantially the same as the claimant's meaning.'
The judge also ruled that Rooney's message was 'a considered post, using wording composed with some care.'
He added: "It would be clear to the ordinary reader from the outset that it was meant seriously, and intended to convey a message of some importance."
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Rooney first took to her public Instagram account in October last year with a post claiming she had found out who was behind leaks to the media from her private social media accounts.
She wrote: "After a long time of trying to figure out who it could be, for various reasons, I had a suspicion.
"To try and prove this, I came up with an idea. I blocked everyone from viewing my Instagram stories except ONE account. (Those on my private account must have been wondering why I haven't had stories on there for a while.)
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"Over the past five months I have posted a series of false stories to see if they made their way into the Sun newspaper. And you know what, they did! The story about gender selection in Mexico, the story about returning to TV and then the latest story about the basement flooding in my new house.
"It's been tough keeping it to myself and not making any comment at all, especially when the stories have been leaked, however I had to. Now I know for certain which account / individual it's come from.
"I have saved and screenshotted all the original stories which clearly show just one person has viewed them.
"It's ................ Rebekah Vardy's account."
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Coleen Rooney must now pay just under £23,000 to Rebekah Vardy in costs for the hearing and will have to prove that Vardy alone was the culprit to successfully defend the lawsuit against her.
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