On Friday night, 1st May 2020 I received a letter from UK solicitors Bristows instructed by Twitter. They demanded I take down my article of 14 April 2020 about Twitter, claiming it was defamatory of unnamed staff. Now, after I wrote back pointing out I was legally qualified and identifying their procedural errors, they claim this was just an informational comment, and not a libel threat at all and they do not have to reply to my requests for information as they are not proceeding with the Pre-Action Protocol they have to follow in England before suing me.
Bristows now claim they were never threatening to sue me on behalf of Twitter. I understand that Robert Graham and Alex Keenlyside are responsible. Image adjusted to show headed paper logo above the relevant paragraph.
In England, the Civil Procedure rules require that before suing someone you write them a letter and try to resolve the claim with them. In libel, the applicable rule is the Pre-action Protocol for Media and Communications Claims. If a party fails to follow the rules, the court can impose tough sanctions like ordering them to pay some or all of the other side’s legal fees even if they ‘win’ and the other party ‘loses’.
As pointed out in my previous article, in their letter to me, Bristows were missing a lot of important information such as (for example) the name of any natural person claimant, details of the alleged serious harm and other elements required by UK law. Of particular importance the claimant has to set out which facts they dispute and why. Therefore I sent them a request for information under the protocol to include the missing information. Bristows now claim they were never following the protocol at all and so do not have to make any disclosures. It follows that there is no intent to sue me at all. I will still consider complaints and further letters with an open mind but in the absence of the requested information see no reason to remove or modify my article.
That is, my article naming Vijaya Gadde and Del Harvey (née Alison Shea) and stating that they had intentionally and in breach of Twitter’s supposed policy allowed vile harassment / stalking of a child abuse victim and anti-Semitic hate speech. My article also stated that, in effect, they were backing the anti-Semite and the stalker by allowing them to continue to post. I am not in receipt of any clear factual statement from Twitter setting out any basis as to why those allegations are wrong.
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg once famously described Twitter as being like a clown car that crashed in a gold-mine. Apparently, this is also true of their lawyers.
