Tuesday 13 October 2009

Carter-Ruck back down

The Guardian reports that Trafigura's legal firm, Carter-Ruck, has abandoned its attempt to gag the Guardian's parliamentary reporting.

The question was asked by MP Paul Farrelly, and went as follows:

"To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and (ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura."

Which underlines what kind of scum Trafigura and Carter-Ruck are.

3 comments:

  1. Well done to the Guardian on winning the case to report on Trafigura.38 Degrees are currently running a campaign on this. Take action now by emailing your MP and asking them to not let this happen again. Take action now, it only takes 2 mins. Go to:

    38degrees.org.uk/stop-the-gag

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  2. Looks interesting, though it's a bit of a duplication of effort of WriteToThem.com. Thanks for the link - I will have a browse through the site.

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  3. To call a law firm 'scum' for providing representation to a client is perhaps inadvisable. Natural persons and bodies corporate are entitled to receive legal counsel.

    In this case, from what I understand, the law firm was simply trying to prevent the release of information that they deemed may be prejudicial to their client's right to fair trial. In short, they were fulfilling their duty.

    To call the company 'scum' is also interesting when takin in context of your last post. "The current detention ... is being inflicted on someone who should be presumed innocent." Is the presumption of innocence a concept that can be arbitrarily applied or not, depending on one's feeling about the accused?

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