Saturday, March 12, 2011

British court hands down first libel fine for tweet...


A former Welsh mayor became the first Briton to be ordered to pay libel damages over a Twitter entry after a political rival sued him in the high court, a report said on Saturday.

Colin Elsbury, a former mayor in the south Wales town of Caerphilly had tweeted ahead of a council election that his independent challenger Eddie Talbot had been "forcibly removed" from a polling station by police before realising that it was a case of mistaken identity, The Times newspaper said.

Although Elsbury later tried to correct the tweet, Talbot took him to court in the Welsh capital Cardiff where a judge on Friday handed down a fine of £3,000 (about 3,500 euros) and ordered him to pay costs of around £50,000 as well as apologise publicly to Talbot on his Twitter feed. More...

Don't miss:
  1. Woman sacked for criticising boss on Facebook gets her job back... 
  2. Tweets are not private, rules watchdog in landmark case...
  3. How to lose your job via Facebook in 160 characters... 
  4. Teacher in Sweden tweets about raping little girls!!! WTF!
  5. Twitter and Facebook costing British economy £14bn a year? 

No comments:

Post a Comment