British Soccer Star [Ryan Giggs] Sues Twitter Over Privacy Issue

[Nye Bevan]

For weeks, British tabloids were prohibited from outing a soccer star who allegedly had a longtime affair with former supermodel and reality-TV star Imogen Thomas. It was due to something issued by British courts called a “super-injunction,” which many British celebrities and personalities obtain, so salacious personal details aren’t published by the papers. Of course, information wants to be free, so that little roadblock didn’t hold back the aptly named @InjunctionSuper, who went public with the allegation May 8 with the above-mentioned tweet. Now the soccer player (still officially unnamed) has turned to the courts yet again, this time with a decidedly harsher legal action.

In papers filed Wednesday with the High Court, an individual identified only as “CTB” sued the social media giant and at least one anonymous user for violating the super-injunction. Of course, after @InjunctionSuper’s tweet, many media outlets began relaying the information.

Ryan Giggs, who’s named in the reports, is one of the most decorated players in the history of Manchester United, the most valuable sports franchise in the world and Britain’s most legendary soccer club.

London-based lawyer James Quartermaine told Bloomberg that there’s little chance Twitter will cooperate with the suit, even though the British courts claim worldwide jurisdiction. Twitter is headquartered in San Francisco. “Twitter will probably just ignore it and consider it to be offensive to their First Amendment rights,” he said. “It’s probably an attempt to try and show that actions have consequences in cyberspace.” Twitter has so far refused to comment on the legal proceedings.

http://www.wired.com/playbook/2011/05/british-soccer-sues-twitter/

Some background on "super-injunctions":

In England and Wales, a superinjunction (or super-injunction) is a form of gagging order in which the press is prohibited from reporting even the existence of the injunction, or any details of it. An example was the superinjunction raised in September 2009 by Carter-Ruck solicitors on behalf of oil trader Trafigura, prohibiting the reporting of an internal Trafigura report into the 2006 Côte d'Ivoire toxic waste dump scandal. The existence of the superinjunction was revealed only when it was referred to in a parliamentary question that was subsequently circulated on the internet (parliamentary privilege protects statements which would otherwise be held to be in contempt of court). Before it could be challenged in court, the injunction was then varied to permit reporting of the question. By long legal tradition, parliamentary proceedings may be reported without restriction. Parliamentary proceedings are only covered by qualified privilege. Roy Greenslade credits the editor of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, with coining the word "super-injunction" in an article about the Trafigura affair in September 2009.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-injunction#UK_superinjunctions


The 2011 British super-injunction controversy started in early 2011 when British newspaper The Sun started publishing stories about anonymous celebrities which were intended to flout British super-injunction laws by carefully omitting details that the press was barred from mentioning. Following this in April 2011, users of non-UK based websites such as social media sites Twitter and Facebook and Wikipedia began posting allegations connecting certain British celebrities with super-injunctions relating to a variety of potentially scandalous activities. Details of such alleged activities by those who had taken out the orders were also published in the Spanish and US press.

In England and Wales, a super-injunction is a form of gagging order in which the press is prohibited from reporting certain details of a case, including identities or actions. These were originally created to protect people whose lives may be at risk if their details were made public, for example child offenders. However, with the passing of the Human Rights Act 1998, which wrote into UK law the European Convention on Human Rights, judges began to use a passage of the Act to extend the powers of these legal rights to cover the right to privacy.

The controversy has led to a number of aspects being publicly examined including freedom of the press, freedom of speech, online censorship, the effect of European law on the UK legal system and fundamental constitutional issues regarding parliamentary privilege and the relation between the judiciary and parliament.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_British_super-injunction_controversy