Twitter

How to sue in respect of abusive comments on the Internet

25 March 2015 by Rosalind English

The Bussey Law Firm PC & Anor v Page [2015] EWHC 563 (QB) – read judgment

The facts of this case are simple. A defamatory comment was posted on the claimant’s Google maps directional page, implying that he was a “loser” as a lawyer and that his firm lost “80%” of cases brought to them. The defendant claimed that someone must have hacked in to his own Google account to put up the post.

There were jurisdictional complications in that the firm is situated in Colarado but these need not concern us here as Sir David Eady, sitting as a High Court judge, allowed the trial to go ahead in England. The real question was  why any third party would have gone to the trouble of hacking into the defendant’s Google account in order to post the offending review; if the objective were merely to hide the hacker’s identity from the claimants, there would be the simpler option of setting up an anonymous Google account. This would in itself render the would-be publisher untraceable, and especially if it were done from a public computer.
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Twitter users “free to speak not what they ought to say, but what they feel”

27 July 2012 by Isabel McArdle

Paul Chambers v DPP [2012] EWHC 2157 – Read judgment

The famous ‘Twitter joke’ conviction of Paul Chambers has been overturned on appeal, bringing welcome clarity to what is and what is not an offence of this type. On discovering a week before he was due to take a flight that the airport was closed due to adverse weather conditions, he tweeted that “I am blowing the airport sky high!!” unless the situation was resolved by the time of his flight. He was convicted of sending a message of a “menacing character”, but has had the conviction quashed on appeal, on the basis that, as it was a joke, it was not of a menacing character.

“I had decided to resort to terrorism”

Mr Chambers was intending to fly out of Robin Hood Airport on 15 January 2010 to meet a romantic partner he met on Twitter. On 6 January, via Twitter, he became aware that severe weather was causing problems at the airport, and engaged in a conversation on Twitter where he made the following comments:

“…I was thinking that if it does [close due to adverse weather] then I had
decided to resort to terrorism”

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Permission to tweet in court to be decided on case by case basis

20 December 2010 by Adam Wagner

The Lord Chief Justice has issued interim guidance on the use of live text-based forms of communication, including Twitter, from court for the purpose of fair and accurate reporting.

For the time being, it will be possible to apply to a judge for permission to turn on one’s mobile phone or computer in order to tweet. Judges must consider whether the application “may interfere with the proper administration of justice“. The most obvious purpose for permitting the use of live, text-based communications “would be to enable the media to produce fair and accurate reports of the proceedings.”

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New button for easy tweeting

12 August 2010 by Guest Contributor

We have added a new ‘Tweet’ button at the bottom of all posts (after you have clicked through to the full article). This means that if you use Twitter, you will be able to share our posts quickly and easily.

This is a good opportunity to explain how the blog links in with Twitter. Our Twitter feed can be found here, or by clicking on the Twitter icon which is always on the right sidebar.

The feed updates instantly with links to new posts on the blog, as well as with all of the links to external human rights news items which are listed along the right sidebar. For more information on how to keep updated through Facebook, RSS and Twitter, you can always click on the subscribe tab at the top of the page. Enjoy!