Dennis RomeroThere's talking shit, and there's tweeting shit. Welcome to 2011.
Courtney Love, L.A.'s sometime mental-health laureate, has tested the boundaries of tweeting shit (thanks, Courtney), and the matter of whether or not some of her keyboard poetry constitutes defamation will head to Los Angeles Superior Court next month.
Unless …
… a settlement can be reached next week. Judge Debre Weintraub ordered the sides to at least try to negotiate a truce on Tuesday or Wednesday.
Via Twitter in 2009 Love called a fashion designer who demanded payment for clothes allegedly taken by the rocker a whore and thief.
Courtney Love tweeted this pic, but she's fully sane. Note the deliberately trashy stocking runs. So grunge.
Despite Love's lunacy, the case could actually set new precedent, and media watchers are keeping a close eye on it. Maybe you should too so that the next time you want to call your frenemy a hooker on Twitter you'll think twice about hitting “enter.”
The key to the case is whether regular folks who saw the tweets would interpret Love's musings as fact or opinion.
In other words, if we called Love a lunatic (as we did above), we'd be protected because it's our opinion and she's a public figure whose right to privacy has been compromised by her own seeking of the spotlight.
Courtney Love tweeted this too.
But if people literally believed that Dawn Simorangkir has taken money for sex then, yes, Love's tweets could be seen as defamatory, according to experts. Also, if people believe she is a liar, same deal.
In that case, though, we think Simorangkir has an uphill battle. It's not as if people tell the truth 100 percent of the time.
Like when we called Love a lunatic.
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