Singer-actress Courtney Love wins landmark Twitter libel case; Chris Ingle, chairman of Rose Law Group Cyber-law Department, says expect more of such cases

By Corina Knoll  | Los Angeles Time

A Los Angeles jury determines the musician did not defame her former attorney in a tweet.

Courtney Love, known for her brash behavior and four-letter words, won a landmark Twitter libel case Friday in which a Los Angeles jury determined the musician did not defame her former attorney in a tweet.

Wearing a black dress, a cream cardigan and a string of pearls, Love was ecstatic outside the courthouse and kissed and hugged her attorneys.

“It was a really great learning experience,” she said, adding that she had avoided Twitter during the trial out of respect for the case.

Dubbed “Twibel,” the civil suit seeking $8 million was filed by Rhonda Holmes, who had once acted as Love’s fraud litigation attorney. The singer-actress filed her own complaint against Holmes, claiming legal malpractice.

Holmes had been hired in December 2008 to look into missing funds from the estate of Kurt Cobain, Love’s late husband.

Holmes and Love parted ways after less than six months. The attorney alleged that the relationship had been contingent on Love refraining from substance abuse, a stipulation that eventually angered the singer. The attorney also said that Love became a difficult client and wouldn’t return calls. She accused the Golden Globe-nominated actress of taking to Twitter as an act of vengeance.

“@noozjunkie I was … devastated when Rhonda J Holmes Esq of San Diego was bought off @fairnewsspears perhaps you can get a quote,” Love tweeted in June 2010 under @CourtneyLoveUK.

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Chris Ingle, Chairman of Rose Law Group Cyberlaw Department had this to say:

Wow. I haven’t heard “Twibel” before; that’s a new one for me. But I like it, and this probably isn’t the last time we’ll be hearing about it, either. Modern day communications are increasing the amount of libel and slander cases being filed.

In the past when someone upset you and you wanted to make a snide comment, you might find your particular a few or your friends and whisper your thoughts to them; no one else heard the comment and after the words were spoken there was no longer any proof of what was said. Now you can use something like Twitter, Facebook, or Yelp to post your snide comment, and everyone in the world can see it. And there’s proof of what was said, who said it, and who heard it. The electronic record makes it a lot easier for lawyers to prove all of the elements of defamation, and the public exposure given to these posts increases both the harm that they can cause and the likelihood that someone will pursue legal action as a result.

That appears to be what happened to Courtney Love. She made what was an apparently unfounded comment about her lawyer, but because she expressed her thought via Twitter, the comment got seen by a lot of people and had a much more damaging effect on the lawyer’s reputation than it would have if Ms. Love had simply spoken it to a few of her friends. On the lawyer’s side the comment caused more damage to her reputation than she could accept, so these parties ended up having a full-blown jury trial. The lawyer got a finding that the comment was false, and Ms. Love got a ruling that she would not have to pay damages, so both parties got a certain amount of vindication out of the decision. But what this lawsuit demonstrates is that what would have been a minor incident ten or twenty years ago can now become something much more serious.

Twitter and Facebook are great tools and they’re here to stay, but people have to learn to change their behavior when they use these services. You cannot do the same things you’ve always done. People who simply transfer their existing proclivities for snide comments to the internet need to be far more careful about what they post and who sees it. If they post something about someone else that is false and defamatory, they will probably find themselves fighting their own Twibel suits in the near future.

You can contact Chris Ingle directly at 480-505-3931 or cingle@roselawgroup.com