
Back in 2009, Courtney Love had been in a heated argument with designer Dawn Simorangkir. Dawn claimed that Courtney owed her thousands of dollars in unpaid clothes.
The dispute erupted on March 17, when Courtney took to her Twitter page and began a long string of shocking insults against Dawn.
Love’s tweets, which instantly landed in the Twitter feeds of her 40,000 or so followers (and countless others via retweets), announced that Simorangkir was a drug-pushing prostitute with a history of assault and battery who lost custody of her own child and capitalized on Love’s fame before stealing from her. “She has received a VAST amount of money from me over 40,000 dollars and I do not make people famous and get raped TOO!” Love wrote..
That particular tirade that Courtney posted on Twitter, Etsy and Myspace – is now the center of a lawsuit, the first of it’s kind. The Hollywood Reporter has more:
“There has never been anything like this case before,” says Simorangkir attorney Bryan Freedman, who will attempt to convince a Los Angeles jury that Love’s false statements destroyed his client’s fashion career, thus entitling her to potentially millions of dollars in damages.
In an age when public figures from Kanye West to Ryan Seacrest communicate influential messages to thousands — sometimes millions — of followers on social platforms, the Love case raises the question of whether celebrities, like the news media, should be liable for what happens if they intentionally put untrue and damaging statements in front of their loyal readers.
“We don’t believe there’s any defamation, and even if there were defamatory statements, there was no damage,” says James Janowitz, an attorney for Love.
A key to the case, say First Amendment lawyers, could be whether an average Twitter user would interpret Love’s vicious tweets as facts rather than merely her opinion.
“I’ll be interested to see if the court gives people posting on Twitter more latitude than other media,” says Alonzo Wickers, a defamation expert who has handled matters for such media clients as Comedy Central and TMZ. “The way Twitter is evolving, it seems to be more of a means to express opinion. I would hope courts give tweets the same latitude as they do an op-ed piece or a letter to the editor.”
Love has already given her deposition in the case. Love claims that she was only repeating in her tweets, things that Simorangkir said herself.
Love will reportedly claim that she had no idea how influential her comments were on Twitter, and she didn’t maliciously intend to ruin anyone’s reputation.
Should get interesting! Trial is scheduled to begin Jan. 18!
What do you think – should Courtney Love be held responsible for nasty Tweets?
Posted Wednesday, January 5th, 2011 at 12:12pm
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