TACOMA, Wash. — A local judge has repeatedly reprimanded a Twitch streamer charged with defamation for referring to the jury as, “chat,” sources outside the courthouse confirm.
“Look at this clip, chat,” said Todd Gardner, who is being sued for making spurious claims about competing speedrunners. “There’s no shot this dude can whistle sprint out of the Shrine of Awakening that fast! It took me 100 hours to perfect that out of bounds clip. And as you know, truth is an iron-clad defense against claims of defamation. Thanks for the bits. Sorry, force of habit.”
The plaintiffs in the case attest that Gardner used his large sub count and influence to defame all other top 10 Breath of the Wild Any% speedrunners, directly resulting in official reviews from speedrun.com and removal from upcoming Games Done Quick lineups.
“He told his mods to time out anyone who mentioned other runners because it was messing with his flow,” said Jaylen Graham, who competes in the same category as Gardner. “It’s just like how he keeps trying to get the bailiff to ‘kick’ any of my co-plaintiffs and I whenever we take the stand to testify against him. Yeah, when he refers to the ‘mod,’ he’s talking about the bailiff.”
After several similar outbursts, Gardner was held in contempt of court.
“You have blatantly disrespected both myself, my bailiff, and this jury with your failure to abide by the rules of this court,” said Judge Sandra Cooper. “It’s not just that you can’t string two sentences together without pausing to shout out gift subs. It’s not even that you asked to run a poll to audit the jury’s reaction in real time. No, the final straw was after I reprimanded you, and you told the bailiff to ‘ban’ me. Your Gen Z vernacular, after being explained to me by my niece, is completely out of line!”
At press time, Todd Gardner has been sentenced to a six month ban from Twitch along with the repayment of every gift sub he had received during his latest 48 hour stream. His 9th place BOTW Any% run has also been scrubbed from the leaderboards.
