Courtney Love facing lawsuit for trashing designer on Twitter

[HMG Celebrity News] – Since it began operations in 2006 Twitter has achieved many firsts, and Courtney Love is about to set another – She’s being sued for defamation by tweeting.

One of Courtney’s favorite designers, Dawn Simorangkir claims Love owed her a few thousand dollars for dresses she bought back in 2009. But instead of paying, the designer alleges Love defamed her on Twitter instead and destroyed her career.

The tweets alleged Simorangkir was a drug-pushing prostitute with a history of assault and battery, who lost custody of her own child, then capitalized on Love’s celebrity status before stealing from her.

“She has received a VAST amount of money from me; over 40,000 dollars,” read one update. “And I do not make people famous and get raped too!”

The immodest outbursts were seen by Love’s 90,000+ fans and even copied by Courtney to her accounts on MySpace, Etsy and other social sites. And those messages are now the basis of a lawsuit that’s headed to a courtroom on February 9th.

“There has never been anything like this case before,” says Simorangkir’s attorney Bryan Freedman, who intends to try and make an LA jury believe Courtney’s statements were malicious and false, and thus destroyed Dawn’s career.

If he wins it could bring the formerly unknown designer literally millions of dollars in damages. But should public figures face litigation if they make untrue statements on social media? Love’s attorney thinks not;

“We don’t believe there’s any defamation, and even if there were, there was no damage,” James Janowitz tells THR.

To help her case, Simorangkir plans to call social media specialist Jessie Stricchiola to the stand. Her job will be to study how many people saw Courtney’s tweets, and to advise on how much credibility such messages get.

Simorangkir denies any truth in the tweets and plans to use them in court – along with Love’s emails and phone calls – to show that while Courtney’s position as a fashion icon is doubtful it was enough for these outbursts to destroy Dawn’s career.

Courtney, meanwhile, plans to call a medical expert to show Love’s mental state at the time was not ‘subjectively malicious’ enough to even justify the suit. His view is that Twitter can be so appealing and addictive, Courtney didn’t realize how her comments would be received by her fans.

In my opinion this is transparent extortion; With nothing more complex than an unsupportable lawsuit a formerly unknown designer gains worldwide exposure [and far higher prices,] then settles out-of-court to make free money as well.

How do you guys see it?…