14 DAY TRIAL // Twitter can be used for a lot of things but, despite more and more businesses using it as a legitimate marketing, support and even sales tool, the justice system is not one you would expect to use the microblogging site in any official dealings. But a UK High Court has done just that, allowing an injunction to be served using the site.
This method was chosen as the case actually relates to the microblogging service and it involves an unknown individual posing as a political blogger in the UK. The anonymous microblogger is posting as Donal Blaney, who runs the Blaney's Blarney blog, which found the content supposedly coming from him to be "mildly objectionable." This type of things have caused controversy in the past and some have even gone to court with cases involving impersonators, though wrongly directed against Twitter.
Blaney is in fact a lawyer himself and owns the Griffin Law firm which will be serving the order. His firm asked the court to be allowed to serve the injunction through Twitter to speed things up, bypassing the regular path which would have it contact Twitter headquarters to acquire the identity of the user. The judge approved with the request as, under UK law, an injunction can be served by alternative means like email or fax rather than in person. Using Twitter was considered to be an extension of that.
The anonymous poster will now receive a message from the court informing him of the legal actions. "Whoever they are, they will be told to stop posting, to remove previous posts and to identify themselves to the High Court via a web link form," Andre Walker from Griffin Law told Reuters. This may be the first time Twitter has been used to serve a court order but social networks have been known to be used in certain circumstances.