On Friday, the law firm representing the Democratic National Committee (DNC) served WikiLeaks with a lawsuit via Twitter. Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll set up a Twitter account this month and has so far delivered this single tweet with service of process to WikiLeaks.
In July, the firm filed a motion to serve WikiLeaks via Twitter in the federal court in the Southern District of New York where the DNC is suing WikiLeaks and the Russian Federation for conspiring to disrupt the 2016 presidential campaign. The motion explained that the plaintiff has attempted to serve WikiLeaks through a variety of other methods that have been unsuccessful and that WikiLeaks maintains a robust presence on Twitter where it has admitted knowledge of the lawsuit.
WikiLeaks acknowledged reading the lawsuit in a Tweet on April 21st “Democrats have gone all Scientology against @WikiLeaks. We read the DNC lawsuit. Its primary claim against @WikiLeaks is that we published their ‘trade secrets’. Scientology infamously tried this trick when we published their secret bibles. Didn’t work out well for them.”
The court granted the DNC motion to serve via Twitter on August 6th.
This is not the first time a court has allowed service via Twitter. In the motion the DNC cited St. Francis Assisi, 2016 WL 5725002 where the federal court in the Northern District of California permitted service of process via Twitter for an otherwise unreachable international defendant.
Additional Reading:
DNC Motion to serve via Twitter
The DNC just served Wikileaks with a lawsuit over Twitter
DNC serves WikiLeaks with lawsuit via Twitter
Photo Credit: Shutterstock / Satori Studio
