In 2014, Courtney Love made history as the first person in the US to go to court over a "Twibel" lawsuit. At the time, a California jury determined the Hole frontwoman should not be held liable for a critical remark she tweeted and deleted about her former attorney, Rhonda Holmes. Now, an appeals court has upheld the earlier ruling and confirmed Love's win.
The allegedly defamatory tweet from 2010 that inspired the lawsuit stated: "I was f*cking devestated [sic] when Rhonda J. Holmes esq. of san diego was bought off," SPIN reports. Love had hired the attorney to pursue a fraud case against people she believed had mismanaged her late husband Kurt Cobain's estate, but apparently a lawsuit never transpired and things didn't end well between the artist and her lawyer.
In the original trial, the jury's task was to determine whether or not Love knew the tweet was untrue, Pitchfork reports. The rocker testified that she believed the tweet was true, and that she had intended it to be a direct message and deleted it immediately upon realizing her mistake.
In the end, the jury was not convinced that the singer had tweeted a lie with the intention of damaging her lawyer's reputation.In this week's opinions, Justice Thomas Willhite confirmed the decision once more.
The appeals court examined the differences between being "bought off" and a "bribe," stating that it would be reasonable for the jury to conclude that the singer-songwriter's claims that the lawyer had been "bought off" "meant that she had been induced in some manner to stop representing her - whether by consideration or by threat."
The Justice adds: "Moreover, given Cobain's repeated testimony that she believed Holmes had been 'compromised' or 'gotten to,' substantial evidence supports the jury's finding that Holmes did not prove by clear and convincing evidence that Cobain knew the statement was false or had serious doubts about the truth of the statement when she made it," Billboard reports. Here's the full opinion here.
Watch Courtney Love perform classic Hole song "Miss World" from her recent Endless Summer Tour with Lana Del Rey, below.
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