UnNews:Carter Ruck prepares to sue whole of Twitter

This article is part of UnNews, your source for up-to-the-picosecond misinformation.

13 October 2009

If you have ever used this, get a damn good lawyer

LONDON, UK -- In a landmark case, litigation legends Carter Ruck are preparing to sue every single person who uses the popular Twitter social networking service, after the tweeting masses foiled a routine blocking of free speech.

This pompous, fat bastard Commons Speaker Michael Martin engaged Carter-Ruck against people who said hurtful things about him. Naturally, he himself was speechless.

Carter Ruck were engaged in the perfectly normal legal activity of trying to prevent anyone saying anything about, well, anything really (in this particular case, a minor case of a blameless oil company innocently and safely disposing of some mildly toxic waste in some piffling African country no-one cares about). In order to ensure that the public weren't unnecessarily bored by this irrelevant item of non-news, Carter Ruck had obtained a court injunction preventing the Guardian (seemingly the only newspaper dull enough to think its readership may want to read about such matters) from mentioning it. They further requested the Guardian refrain from reporting on the question due to be asked in the Houses of Parliament - surely an act of public service, as nothing newsworthy ever happens in the Houses of Parliament.

For some reason though, the Guardian wasn't happy about this. Citing the appallingly antiquated notion of "free speech", they threw their metaphorical toys out of their internet pram, and placed an article on their website complaining about the situation. The article read something along these lines:

"Nasty lawyers are stopping us telling you something boring. We can't tell you which lawyers, we can't tell you why they're stopping us, we can't tell you why you should care, and we can't even tell you what we can't tell you about. Obviously, this is intolerable, and you should consider it a harbinger of the apocalypse."

Before you could say "PR disaster", every single person who has ever used Twitter had complained about this perfectly legal action as some kind of an assault on "Free Speech". These anarchic hackers then went on to publish on their Twitter feeds not just the name of the company involved (Trafigura - not that it matters us telling you now, because the whole world and his neighbour already knows) but also lengthy essays detailing every aspect of the story that was still under legal protection at that point.

As these people so blatantly disregarded the court order, Carter Ruck has decided to sue them all. Individually. Writs are being issued even now via personal message on Twitter - which of course are completely legally binding. Rumours that this is a blatant attempt to distract attention from Trafiguras follow-up plans to kill the first-born male sons of every family in another inconsequential African country have been dismissed as a blatant fabrication.

Sources

• "Guardian claims victory on 'gag'" bbc.co.uk, Oct 13, 2009

• David Leigh "Gag on Guardian reporting MP's Trafigura question lifted" guardian.co.uk, Oct 13, 2009

See Also

• Carter Ruck on Twitter