'Anti-Social Media': Courtney Love Faces Another Online Defamation Suit

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Two months after actress and "Hole" chanteuse Courtney Love agreed to dole out $430,000 to settle a libel claim involving impolitic comments she Tweeted about a fashion designer (Dawn Simorangkir a/k/a Dawn Younger-Smith v. Courtney Michelle Love et al. (Case No. BC41059)) [see "TUOL" posts 3/4/11, 8/25/09], Kurt Cobain's widow again finds herself a defendant in a Los Angeles Superior Court libel suit, this time, filed by her former attorneys, Frederic Gordon and Rhonda Holmes.

As reported by The Hollywood Reporter's THR, Esq. blog and the ABA Journal Law News Now blog, the San Diego-based Holmes & Gordon law firm, which represented Love in 2008-2009 in litigation seeking to recover assets allegedly filched from Cobain's Estate, has sued its former client for defamation, false light invasion of privacy and intentional interference with advantageous economic relations.

The plaintiffs contends that Love fired them as counsel after they purportedly urged her not to engage in substance abuse during the existence of their attorney-client relationship. After the firm allegedly resisted Love's efforts to rehire it, the Complaint alleges that Love Tweeted that Attorney Holmes was "bought off." The plaintiff also alleges that in a subsequent July 2010, online interview, Love said "they got to her [Holmes]" in explaining why her former attorney had stopped taking her calls.

Holmes & Gordon is seeking punitive damages against the Hole vocalist. "TUOL" recommends that Love purchase an electric typewriter because she doesn't seem to handle social media platforms all that well.