{"id":2441,"date":"2014-01-28T19:03:45","date_gmt":"2014-01-28T19:03:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ncjolt.org\/?p=2441"},"modified":"2020-06-04T20:53:57","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T20:53:57","slug":"vindicated-courtney-love-wins-americas-first-twibel-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/blogs\/vindicated-courtney-love-wins-americas-first-twibel-lawsuit\/","title":{"rendered":"#vindicated: Courtney Love Wins America\u2019s First \u201cTwibel\u201d Lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"

A California jury recently found in favor of Courtney Love in the nation\u2019s first libel-via-Twitter, or \u201cTwibel<\/a>,\u201d lawsuit.\u00a0 After eight days of testimony and three hours of deliberations, the jury determined that Love was not liable for publicly posting a disparaging tweet about her former attorney, Rhonda Holmes, concluding that Love did not realize the message contained false information.\u00a0 Holmes had been seeking $8,000,000 in damages.
\nThe dispute<\/a> began in 2010 when Holmes decided not to represent Love in a fraud action involving the estate of Love\u2019s late husband, grunge musician Kurt Cobain.\u00a0 Convinced that Holmes had been bribed, Love tweeted that she was \u201cdevestated [sic] when Rhonda J. Holmes esq. of san diego was bought off.\u201d\u00a0 Love, who confessed to being technologically inept<\/a>, claimed that she intended to send a private message to an investigative journalist, posting the message publicly by mistake<\/a>.\u00a0 Love erased<\/a> the tweet shortly after it was posted.
\nAlthough Love\u2019s case was the first Twitter libel suit to make it in front of a jury, accusations of defamation-in-140-characters-or-less are becoming more common<\/a>.\u00a0 In fact, Love herself settled a similar lawsuit in 2009 after she tweeted unflattering remarks about a fashion designer.\u00a0 In 2011, a blogger in Oregon settled with a local doctor after tweeting an apparently unfounded allegation that the doctor had offered to trade medical treatment for sex.\u00a0 And an Illinois court dismissed a 2009 complaint by a realtor against one of its tenants after concluding that the tenant\u2019s tweet\u2014\u201cWho said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks its okay\u201d\u2014was too vague to qualify as tortious under state libel law.<\/p>\n

Twitter users can harm the reputations of individuals without necessarily subjecting themselves to the personal jurisdiction of the states in which that harm occurs. In addition, because many reasonable readers do not expect informal tweets to convey factual information, courts may be likely to treat tweets as expressing opinions, which are afforded greater protection than purely factual assertions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These cases highlight a few of the difficulties<\/a> plaintiffs face in using traditional defamation and libel law to protect themselves from damaging statements on Internet self-publishing services like Twitter.\u00a0 Like other Internet self-publishing services, Twitter does not require its users to have any direct contact with the followers who read their posts.\u00a0 As a result, Twitter users can harm the reputations of individuals without necessarily subjecting themselves to the personal jurisdiction<\/a> of the states in which that harm occurs. In addition, because many reasonable readers<\/a> do not expect informal tweets to convey factual information, courts may be likely to treat tweets as expressing opinions, which are afforded greater protection than purely factual assertions.
\nPlaintiffs face at least one other major barrier to using traditional law as a remedy for damaging statements published on the Internet. Defamation and libel law<\/a> developed in the era of traditional print journalism and publishing, when large, stable, and deep-pocketed media companies controlled most of the nation\u2019s print publications.\u00a0 Today, almost anyone can instantly self-publish potentially defamatory statements to audiences numbering in the thousands or even millions, and federal law<\/a> generally exempts<\/a> most web hosting services and ISPs from liability for defamatory statements made by their users.\u00a0 As a result, it can be difficult for the victims of libelous tweets to locate or recover adequate damages from individuals who defame them online.
\nDespite the setback, Twitter\u2019s ever-increasing popularity makes it almost inevitable that more Twibel will eventually make their way into courtrooms across the country.\u00a0 For her part, Love\u2014who at last check had over 255,000 Twitter followers<\/a>\u2014claims to have learned from her mistakes.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ve been tweeting nicely for like three years now,\u201d she reportedly said<\/a> after the trial.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A California jury recently found in favor of Courtney Love in the nation\u2019s first libel-via-Twitter, or \u201cTwibel,\u201d lawsuit.\u00a0 After eight days of testimony and three hours of deliberations, the jury determined that Love was not liable for publicly posting a disparaging tweet about her former attorney, Rhonda Holmes, concluding that Love did not realize the …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2441"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2441"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7521,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2441\/revisions\/7521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}