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New Edition's Johnny Gill Settles Twitter Lawsuit

By Cynthia Hsu, Esq. on August 26, 2011 | Last updated on March 21, 2019

New Edition singer Johnny Gill's Twitter lawsuit has settled out of court. The singer had previously been accused of defamation by Ira DeWitt, CEO of Notifi Records.

The defamation suit started when Gill took to his Twitter account to publicly bash DeWitt. He called her "deranged," "f**king nuts," and accused her of running a "fake company."

Where did all of this Twitter bashing come from? Gill says that DeWitt hired some other singer to polish off his song. He also says that his song was then leaked on a false Twitter account by DeWitt, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

DeWitt was none too happy with this Twitter tirade. She accused Gill of defaming and damaging her reputation. She filed a lawsuit against the singer in early August this year, The Hollywood Reporter reports.

Maybe celebs should learn to cool it when it comes to blasting their anger over Twitter.

Granted, it is difficult to reign in your emotions when involved in heated arguments. And, with social media outlets like Twitter, it's becoming increasingly easier to blast your "opinion" about someone over the web.

Twitter defamation lawsuits are likely even more difficult to sort out. In order to win a defamation lawsuit, a person needs to show that the statement made was false. Statements that are opinions are not "false."

So, was calling DeWitt "deranged" an opinion that Gill was expressing? Or was this a false statement?

These are issues that would likely have been tried in court if Johnny Gill's Twitter lawsuit had gone that far. But, at the least, this case seems to have settled on friendly terms. "Through conflict we found a resolution, and not to mention I've found my friend again," the New Edition singer told TMZ.

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