Judge Throws Out Runner’s Negligence Case

A judge has thrown out a claim for negligence from a race competitor as organisers were able to use a trail of moronic posts on a Facebook group as evidence that the claimant was ill-prepared.

While negotiating the 268-kilometre BackBone Race, runner Karl Allwood found himself on the wrong path and accidentally descended the wrong side of the infamous Boffers Pass. He was left facing a snowstorm in -10 degrees C. He was found six hours later by hill rescue, almost frozen and wearing only one glove – backwards – and what appeared to be a hat made of the folded paper of his route map.

“Easiest case ever,” said Rick McGowan, crowdfunded lawyer for BackBone Events. Within two minutes of beginning research we found a Facebook post he made two days before the event, which read “Hi, I wondered what’s the best hat for the BackBone?”, screenshat it, took it to the judge and labelled it ‘Exhibit A'”.

“I’m not even a qualified lawyer,” he continued. “I just took this case, and then the day before I posted in a law group. ‘Anyone know how I go about defending this?'”

In closing, judge Justice Salmon said “Clearly if you were entering this race without ever having used gloves or a hat before, then the problems you ran into were just Darwin doing his stuff. And by the way, next time you appear in court ask your Facebook groups what colour tie is the best to wear. I’m giving you two weeks of community service, just for that fucking yellow monstrosity hanging around your neck.”

This outcome could lead to the revisiting of a number of negligence cases over the years, including the case of Stu Barksby vs the Wingsuit Ultra100. The race involved starting at the top of a mountain and wingsuiting the first 25 miles of a 100-mile goal. Barksby commented two days prior, on an unofficial page related to the race, “I’ve never done wingsuiting before. Can I do this using my dressing gown?”

Barksby broke an arm and both legs, and suffered suspected brain damage. The brain damage was unfortunately difficult to quantify.

An admin for the group in question, Winging It, said, “We assumed it was a joke. One of our veteran racers responded with ‘You are joking, right? Seriously? That would be a fucking stupid thing to do. You are not ready for the race!’ but he was shouted down by other morons yelling ‘Haterz gonna hate,’ and ‘Why do you have to ground someone in reality like that, you pathetic little man?’ He deleted his post, which meant all the OP ever saw was a stream of ‘You’ll be fine’.

The admin continued, “Now we have to take any potentially comical post seriously, and just call them a dick from the start. We’d like to get some of the £200,000 back that we had to compensate him with, but heard he had invested it in botcoin.”

Other race entrants are examining the BackBone case carefully. “They shouldn’t use documentation of my intentions as evidence of my intentions,” screamed Sophia Markle of Winersh. “They should allow them to remain in doubt until it just gets blamed on someone who didn’t cuddle me enough.” Markle aims to be the first person to dive to the bottom of the Marianna Trench without goggles.

“I’ve worked hard for this record, up all night editing vlogs and curating Instagram stories. If this goes to shit I don’t want someone saying it was because I was a moron. Do you have any idea what that could cost me in retweets?”