R (Roome) v Senior Coroner for Gloucestershire & TikTok Info Tech UK Ltd. [2026] EWHC 1808 (Admin) 16 July 2026 – judgment here.
Social media is not just an important aspect of many people’s lives, but may also provide an important insight into how they came by their death. This latest High Court judgment provides an illustration of how coronial investigations will have to adapt to a world in which crucial evidence may reside within social media platforms, messaging applications and digital ecosystems that were barely considered relevant in inquests only a few years ago.
The original Inquest
In April 2022 Jools Sweeney, who was only 14 years old, had been found hanging from a cord in his bedroom. His family could offer no explanation as to why Jools might have acted as he did. He left no final letter, he had been laughing and joking with a friend earlier that day. There was limited evidence that he was unhappy, let alone suicidal, at the time of his death. He was apparently making plans to see his best friend the next day and trying to arrange to play a computer game with another friend on the evening of his death.
His documentary inquest held less than six months later was, by the standards of many coronial investigations, unremarkable. In such circumstances it is understandable why a brief r.23 inquest might be thought to reduce the distress of a family. All the evidence was read under r.23 Coroners (Inquests) Rules 2013. It lasted less than 30 minutes.
Later investigation
However, after the inquest his mother, Ms Roome, began what the court referred to as “tireless investigations” seeking to understand why her son had died. By 2022, much of the teenager’s social life, communications, relationships and exposure to external influences existed digitally. Yet the original investigation proceeded without detailed forensic examination of his devices and without substantial disclosure from social media platforms. Ms Roome was concerned that important questions had not been examined. She thought that her son may have been attempting ‘the blackout challenge’, a dangerous social media trend that encourages participants to intentionally choke themselves or restrict their breathing until they lose consciousness.
A core issue was that the police investigation had relied principally upon a manual review of Jools’ devices. The Senior Investigating Officer (SIO) acknowledged that she was not a digital forensic specialist, had not received forensic training and reviewed only material accessible through ordinary user functions. Although a device download existed, it was not fully utilised. The SIO had not considered it proportionate or feasible to review the contents in full. Access to social media companies’ data was also limited, and in some respects unavailable.
Although the Court accepted that the Assistant Coroner who heard the inquest was not personally at fault, as the inquest merely reflected the limited information supplied to the Coroner, that deficiency was regarded as particularly significant given his extensive use of social media, messaging applications and online video content.
The Coroner did not oppose the application and had no substantive involvement in the proceedings. TikTok was joined as a party to the claim as it would likely be an Interested Person at any fresh inquest. The company also did not oppose the application. TikTok informed the Court that some categories of behavioural data had already been deleted under its retention policies before notification of the death, although other material remained available.
Given that no party sought to persuade the court otherwise it is unsurprising that the Divisional Court agreed that in light of investigative deficiencies and new evidence it was desirable to hold a fresh inquest. The original inquest was quashed and a fresh inquest ordered under s.13 of the Coroners Act 1988.
Is this just a slight turn of the tide?
Coroners may well wonder whether have the flood gates been opened (or indeed well and truly taken off their hinges) by this case? Your blogger suspects not, or at least, not yet.
This was an unopposed and particularly persuasive case. Although the judges observed that some allegations advanced on behalf of the Claimant bordered upon speculation, the Bench identified a number of matters which justified reopening the investigation and inquest including:
- evidence that Jools was an exceptionally heavy TikTok user;
- the limited examination of his electronic devices;
- the existence of TikTok accounts unknown to investigators at the time of the first inquest;
- an absence of social media disclosure;
- the possibility of a fraudulent Instagram approach shortly before Jools’ death;
- unexamined witnesses who had contact with Jools shortly before his death;
- location data suggesting Jools may have left the house during the evening; and
- his mother’s account of the position in which she found him,
This was all evidence unavailable to the original inquest.
As technology permeates all our lives it should be no surprise if there is an emerging expectation that coronial investigations into deaths involving young people might require meaningful scrutiny of their social media activity. Tik tok was only launched in the UK eight years ago. Obtaining a social media history is arguably no different from obtaining and reading the Filofax of someone born last century (Gen Z’s will have to google that unfamiliar word) if it were thought there was a realistic prospect of material recorded in leatherbound six ring pages elucidating the circumstances of the death.
Where online activity forms a substantial part of a deceased’s life, mobile devices and social media accounts may inevitably provide important background evidence. Answering the question of how a person came by their death may well require access to digital evidence that simply did not feature in coronial practice even half a decade ago.