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Courtney Love Twitter Defamation Case Settled: Love Pays $430,000

By Jason Beahm on March 06, 2011 | Last updated on March 21, 2019

Courtney Love has settled her Twitter defamation case. She was sued over allegations of defamation after she railed on Twitter about a businesswoman named Dawn Simorangkir and her small business.

The dispute began over a $4,000 payment for clothing. The Courtney Love Twitter defamation case was going to be the first-ever high-profile defamation trial involving Twitter.

But it appears as though Love's attorneys convinced the rocker to avoid trial and pay up.

Apparently the price was right to get out for Love, who settled for $430,000. The first payment of cash is due today, with the rest of the payments spread out until 2014, the Hollywood Reporter reports.

It's no surprise that Love's attorney, James Janowitz saw the settlement as a positive.

"Because of the extended payout it's a modest settlement ... They got out with an amount that left them bragging rights but nothing else," Janowitz said, adding that the Courtney Love Twitter account was no longer active, but that he "could be wrong."

Love had contended that her posts on Twitter were expressions of opinion and that even if they were defamatory, there were no damages. But Simorangkir's attorneys adamantly disputed that argument: "The amount of the settlement says it all ... Her reprehensible defamatory comments were completely false and $430,000 is quite a significant way to say I am sorry. One would hope that, given this disaster, restraint of pen, tongue and tweet would guide Ms. Love's future conduct," said Simorangkir attorney Bryan Freedman said to the Hollywood Reporter.

So what can we learn from all this? Tweeting defamatory remarks can be costly. $430,000 is a lot of money, and if the Courtney Love Twitter case had gone to trial, the verdict could have been far more. "People are getting in trouble for Twitter postings on an almost daily basis," said First Amendment Attorney Doug Mirell. "The laws controlling what is and isn't libelous are the same regardless of the medium in which the statements appear," he said, the Associated Press reports.

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