Online defendants are getting "Twittery"

Courts in New Zealand and Australia recently permitted service via Facebook. In a further example of the courts adapting procedures to respond to new technologies, the High Court has made an order for service using the social networking website, Twitter.

Donal Blaney, who runs a blog called "Blaney's Blarney", was being impersonated on Twitter by someone using the Twitter username "@BlaneysBlarney" together with a photograph of him and a link to his blog.

He asked the court for an injunction against the unknown defendant to prevent him posting anything on the site and for him to identify himself to Mr Blaney's solicitors. As the defendant was anonymous and there was no easy means of identifying him the judge allowed the order to be served via Twitter.

It is clear that serving orders to identify anonymous internet posters, using the medium they are using for the illegal activity, is a break from the standard approach in similar cases. Serving the defendant direct (in this case using Twitter) provides a quicker and cheaper route.

In this case the defendant did comply with the order. If he had not, then an order could have been made against Twitter to establish whether the defendant had read the order. The defendant would then have faced the prospect of liability for the costs of the further application, as a consequence of failing to comply with an order of the court.

This is definitely one area to watch in the future.

For more information, please contact Emma Anderson on emma.anderson@harveyingram.com or call 0116 257 6141.