Social media litigation lawyer makes history once again
Harassment lawyer Yair Cohen, has obtained permission to serve an harassment injunction on internet troll via the social media app itself.
For ages, rules that stated that injunctions needed to be served through conventional methods prevented people abused on social media from obtaining an injunction against their faceless abusers. The only remedy for victim of internet harassment was to quit Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, which often would be the advice given by the police. This meant that the abusing internet trolls were able to get away with their harassment and abuse and carry on harassing the same victim on other social media or just start picking on other good people for absolutely no good reason.
Recently this out-of-date rule about how to serve harassment injunctions was changed. The new rules allow defamation and social media lawyers to serve harassment injunctions by ” alternative methods” which is great.
So last Friday I went to the High Court and obtained an injunction to try and stop one of those persistent internet trolling pests from abusing my clients on social media.
On this occasion the internet trolls carried out their abuse on Instagram. This was a particularly horrible racial and sexual abuse coupled with threats and mind games directed at exceptionally decent folks who had the courage to say “no”. My clients were not going to tolerate this abuse any longer, and why should they?
His Honour Judge Nicol got it, granted the injunction and gave permission to serve it via social media or to be more precise via Instagram directly to the troll’s Instagram’s account which we did earlier today.
The internet troll was not so brave this time and straight away deleted his or her Instagram account. I don’t think our clients will hear from this person ever again but the troll on the other hand is very likely to hear from us. Perhaps it’s time internet trolls start to get punished for at least some of the abuse they inflict on decent people. Normal people like you and I have a right to mind our own business and use internet and social media without being harassed and abused.
This is a hugely encouraging development, which will almost certainly place online trolls at risk of being hit with a powerful injunction which will be served on them directly to their harassing social media account, which if they breach could result in their imprisonment for contempt of court as well as for the harassment itself.
Finding out their identities is no longer a big deal thanks to social media websites being more co-operative than ever in assisting internet and social media lawyers do their job protecting their clients from internet harassment and abuse.
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