A LEADING London law firm has been forced to abandon a legal bid to stop the Guardian newspaper from reporting an MP’s Commons question about illegal dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast by a London-based firm.
Lawyers for oil trading company Trafigura obtained an injunction on Monday night preventing the newspaper, and one other, from reporting that Labour MP Paul Farrelly had tabled a question to a minister about the issue.
The legal challenge by lawyers Carter-Ruck caused alarm as it threatened the freedom enjoyed by journalists and writers since the Bill of Rights was passed in 1688 to report on anything put before the Houses of Parliament.
Trafigura last month offered compensation to 31,000 people in the Ivory Coast for the dumping of petro-chemical washings in 2006, which has killed 16 people and left thousands more sick.
However, locals argue that up to 100,000 people were affected after hundreds of tons of petroleum “slops” from a Trafigura-hired ship, the Probo Koala, were dumped near the Ivorian city of Abidjan by a subcontractor.
The company, which has denied wrongdoing, agreed a $198 million out-of-court settlement with the Ivory Coast government in 2007 which exempts it from legal proceedings in the West African country.
Following the injunction, the Guardian reported that it had been blocked from revealing the question, its contents, the minister to whom it was tabled and where the question was listed in the House of Commons’ order paper.
However, the legal firm backed down shortly before the newspaper went to court to challenge the injunction, following a frantic morning of posts about the issue on social-networking site Twitter.
The legal firm’s bid was further undermined when copies of the report into the toxic dumps commissioned by Trafigura in 2007 from technical consultants Minton were published on the internet.
In his question to secretary of state for justice Jack Straw, Mr Farrelly had asked about the effectiveness of whistleblowers’ protection legislation and press freedom, following an earlier injunction blocking reporting of a report into the toxic dumping.
Editor of the Guardian Alan Rusbridger last night welcomed the legal firm’s decision to back down, saying: “I’m very pleased that common sense has prevailed and that Carter-Ruck’s clients are now prepared to vary this draconian injunction to allow reporting of parliament. It is time that judges stopped granting ‘super-injunctions’ . . .”
The existence of the injunction also prompted calls for emergency House of Commons questions to Mr Straw, particularly from Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg.
Following the decision of Carter-Ruck to back down, Mr Clegg posted: “ really pleased the Guardian ban has been lifted. This is a victory for freedom of speech and online activism”.
Actor Stephen Fry, who has 800,000 followers of his Twitter postings, declared: “Can it be true? Carter-Ruck caves in! Hurrah! Trafigura will deny it had anything to do with Twitter, but we know don’t we? We know! Yay!!!”
The BBC carried no reference to the injunction until Carter-Ruck withdrew the injunction on the grounds that news organisations face contempt charges if they knowingly breach an injunction served on others.
Ever since the Spycatcher case in the 1980s news organisations which knowingly breach an injunction served on others are in contempt of court, so the corporation, too, felt bound by the Guardian injunction.