The High Court has ordered a fresh inquest into the death of 14-year-old Jools Sweeney, overturning the original hearing after finding it failed to consider social media evidence. The ruling is the first in England and Wales to quash an inquest on such grounds.
Sweeney died at his home in Cheltenham in April 2022. The original inquest in September that year lasted just 23 minutes and heard no oral evidence. New material, including TikTok data described as highly probative of overuse or addiction, as well as contact from a fraudulent Instagram account linked to an African crime gang, was omitted from proceedings.
His mother, Ellen Roome, who launched a legal challenge against the coroner, is also suing TikTok and ByteDance in the United States. Her campaigning contributed to the enactment of Jools' Law in April 2026, which requires tech companies to preserve a child's online data within five days of death.