Just ask Courtney Love.

Perhaps the most famous widow in music history had a rather amusing Twitter account (CourtneyLoveUK), which has since been removed; but during its reign, Love’s feed offered a great deal of value. Whether it was stream-of-conscious rants or almost-naked pictures, Love always had something for the masses.

That is, until, she got downright nasty with fashion designer Dawn Simorangkir, blasting Simorangkir with such gems like a “asswipe nasty, lying, hosebag thief”; or “a history of dealing cocaine”; and “lost all custody of her child”; as well as being convicted of “assault and burglary.”

As a response to Love’s kind compliments, Simorangkir filed a defamation suit against the Hole lead singer, and the results of the filing are in, and let’s just say Love’s comments about Simorangkir could very well go down as one of the most expensive tweets ever.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Love has agreed to pay the fashion designer $430,000.

Apparently, representing the celebrity who’s responsible for one of the more expensive tweets ever went to the head of Love’s attorney, James Janowitz, who offered this (misguided?) reaction about how pleased he was with the ruling:

“…because of the extended payout it’s a modest settlement. They got out with an amount that left them bragging rights but nothing else.”

Simorangkir’s legal team evidently wanted a higher sum, but had to settle for almost half a million dollars. One hopes that’s enough money to salve the wounds caused by Love’s Twitter rants.

Image courtesy

ORIGINAL ARTICLE: How much is a single tweet worth? Would you believe $50,000? That’s the price a Chicago based realty company is trying to get in a defamation lawsuit.

Back in May, Amanda Bonnen, did what any Twitter user does… tweeted a complaint. Below is the text from her tweet, via Chicago Bar-tender:

"@JessB123 You should just come anyway. Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it’s okay."

Though her account has since been deleted, it should be noted that at the time of this tweet Amanda had approximatley 20 followers.

Do you think this tweet could’ve caused any damage? Tell us.

The Horizon Realty Group feels that her tweet did some damage, as they’ve filed a suit in the Cook County Circuit Court. The Chicago Sun-Times has some interesting quotes from Jeffrey Michael, whose family runs Horizon:

"The statements are obviously false, and it’s our intention to prove that … We’re a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization."

If you wish to read the "Verified Complaint" you can go here (it’s a PDF).

Do you think we will start seeing more lawsuits from tweets? Let us know your thoughts.

Norberg has set up a website which simply includes the following text-image, and links to his MySpace and Facebook pages:

Yelp, who according to Elinor Millsat CNET, says lawsuits like this stemming from reviews on their site are uncommon, shouldn’t have to worry much about it if their terms of service page is any indication. In one section it reads:

Responsibility for Your Content.

b. Because you alone are responsible for Your Content (and not Yelp), you may expose yourself to liability if, for example, Your Content violates any third-party right, including any copyright, trademark, patent, trade secret, moral right, privacy right, right of publicity, or any other intellectual property or proprietary right; contains material that is false, intentionally misleading, or defamatory; contains material that is unlawful, including illegal hate speech or pornography; exploits or otherwise harms minors; or violates or advocates the violation of any law or regulation.

I’m no lawyer, but if I had to guess, I would say that defamation may fall under "moral rights." I will be curious to know how the case pans out for Norberg though, as it could have quite an impact on Internet reviews in general. If the chiropractor wins, pissed off customers all over the web better watch out.

British Man Pushes Google On Defamation

If this case were in the US, where search engines and other websites generally can claim no responsibility over third party content, Retkin’s case probably wouldn’t make it out of a lawyer’s office. British law works a little differently.

A report in The Independent said that in Britain, the same legal protection is conditional. If a company does not have notice of a complaint and time to act upon it, they have some insulation from these claims.

Retkin has complained about online postings accusing him of running a fraudulent business appearing in Google’s search results. Though the report said Google claimed to have removed material and blacklisted links to it, a query for ‘Dotworlds registrar’ at press time turned up a mailing list post with those accusations as the top result.

Google’s response made the usual claim that the company is not responsible for the results of a query. "Google has absolutely no connection, control or ability to direct or influence the content of web pages which may be shown as links within any given set of search results," Google’s legal counsel Harjinder Obhi said in the report.

UPDATE: For commentary from Retkin, see our chat with him here.

A legal system once tentative about taking on digital cases is braving the waters with more frequency. Most of the cases we’ve reported on have involved the statements of anonymous commentators, liability for which webmasters and bloggers have been repeatedly exonerated (or are expected to be). But these are different.

Banks v. Milum – Georgia

"Rafe Banks will never make one single move against me or this website because he knows that we have the witnesses to prove that he carried these drug dealer payoffs to [a] judge."

Those are the now famous last words of David Milum, of Forsyth County, Georgia, who owes Mr. Banks, Milum’s former attorney, $50,000 in compensatory damages. The first case the Media Law Resource Center is aware of that has actually saddled a webmaster with liability.

Milum was disappointed (to put it lightly) with Banks’ handling of his DUI case and fired Banks. When Banks refused to pay back the $3,000 retainer, Milum repeatedly accused Banks of bribing judges on behalf of drug dealers.

Milum couldn’t produce the witnesses he mentioned above.

Barrett-Jackson Auction Company, LLC v. ThumbCo – Arizona

David Clabuesch, a Michigan judge, was hoping his 1970 Hemi Barracuda would fetch upwards of a million dollars at an Arizona muscle car auction. When the car sold for just $300,000, Clabuesch wasn’t happy.

When I say he wasn’t happy, I mean that he chained the wheels after the auction, put up a sign that saying the sale was void, and accused the auctioneer of quick-gaveling the sale.

Though Clabeusch didn’t actually post anything on line (from what I gather), chat rooms and blogs had a field day talking about the auction. As such, Phoenix-based Barrett-Jackson sued Clabeusch on the grounds that his claims were damaging the company’s reputation.

Judge Clabuesch is preparing a lawsuit of his own.

Yoon v. Carney – California

ACLU activist Joanne Yoon’s job was, basically, to keep a close eye on the San Diego Minutemen while they held their rallies. The San Diego Minutemen don’t like her much. In fact, they’re kind of mean.

Through mass-circulated emails and blog posts, members of the Minutemen group, who’ve taken the responsibility upon themselves to monitor the US’s border with Mexico, called Yoon an "anorexic ACLU slut" and "a skank" who sleeps with "those little brown Border Hoppers" daily.

If untrue, those statements jump the line of opinion, and land square in the realm of libel.

In late December, Baker published a blog post detailing how he got the name and phone number of a spammer, and then proceeded to call him "to let him know how I feel about their spam."

According to Baker, he had been receiving a large amount of image spam from an online pharmacy called RXCart.org, a site that sells prescription pills in bulk. In the blog post, Baker alleged that RXCart.org orders were processed by Health Solutions Network, whom he also assumes is responsible for the spam.

Health Solutions Network is run by Ralph Penton, a Washington state resident, easily enough found through public information published on the Internet. Health Solutions Network took about as kindly to the spammer accusations as Penton did about being told off on the telephone by a complete stranger.

Penton and his company filed suit against Baker, alleging defamation, tortious interference with contracts, restraint of trade, trademark infringement and trademark dilution, fraud, and harassment by phone.

Baker shouldn’t have been surprised by being served the papers. The company came right on his blog and gave him notice in the comments section. Among their objections:

Health Solutions Network, LLC (HSN) does not currently, nor has the Company ever processed orders for RxCart.org. Your claim to that effect is not accurately founded and is false. This we can prove.

In the case you cite in your BLOG, you have found HSN because the clever spammer wanted you to. The spammer is hiding behind an attractive target to divert the vigilant attention of fed up, but uninformed individuals. [...]

The Conclusion in your BLOG that HSN is a spammer is completely and totally false.

Informing your readership to follow the same path that you did to HSN is irresponsible and uninformed and has resulted in possible criminal harassment. HSN has filed a complaint with the Snohomish County Police Department. [...]

In addition, the phone company is now working in conjunction with the sheriff’s department actively tracing all inbound phone calls that are made to the phone number listed on the original blog post. All calls will be treated as harassment and acted on accordingly.

If HSN’s defense is accurate, then there are two important takeaways from this case, both related to Internet research. The first is that the Web is well-suited for clandestine, nearly anonymous tomfoolery. For those that know what they’re doing, it’s easy to be somebody else.

The second thing we learn is that privacy for the non-hackers out there may be a thing of the past. Nobody knows better than Google’s Eric Schmidt how easy it is to get a wealth of kinda-sorta-public-but-kinda-sorta-private information off the Web.

Via Media Law Resource Center

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Kinderstart Lawsuit Shown The Door

Can KinderStart make a defamation suit stick to Google? Will Google see a complete dismissal of charges after the next court date in September? Give us your verdict at WebProWorld.

The lawsuit against Google by KinderStart may have been dismissed, but it has not ended. Attorneys for the plaintiff noted in a statement made after the judge’s decision that they “have the full opportunity to amend all Nine Counts in the class action complaint.”

However, the attorneys may wish to attend to their website first. At press time, the GlawInfo.com website returns a message that the page has been suspended. That’s not a good impression to make on visitors looking for more information.

In their statement, KinderStart’s legal team appear to have chosen a new tack as they amend the complaint ahead of a September 29th court date:

The defamation claim is not as far-fetched as one may think at first glance. Eric Goldman, Santa Clara University assistant professor and director of the High Technology Law Institute, reviewed the KinderStart opinion, and said “there are very few novel or surprising aspects of this ruling.”

He also examined the defamation issue in the case:

Goldman excerpted the judge’s opinion as it pertained to defamation, and dissected its potential for causing Google some headaches:

Goldman sees Google as ultimately winning the case, due to the “skill of Google’s counsel.” But it’s mostly a sure thing now, instead of definitely.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Maine’s tourism department received visitors of another sort: angry bloggers who wrote at length reviling Warren Kremer Paino for its litigation against Dutson and his attacks on what he perceived as wasteful spending by the state with the agency.

Dutson faced copyright infringement, defamation and trade libel charges from the agency. He had placed a copy of an ad created by Warren Kremer Paino for the tourism office on his blog.

That ad contained a phone number that proved to be one for a phone sex operation. Dutson obtained the image from the state’s website, where it is still publicly available for download as part of a PowerPoint presentation.

Attorneys for Warren Kremer Paino withdrew the suit “without prejudice,” the Concord Monitor reported, so if the agency choose to it could refile the suit again.

A Maine representative, Stephen Bowen, had called upon Governor John Baldacci to suspend its dealings with Warren Kremer Paino. The Lincoln County News reported how Jack Cashman, Maine’s commissioner of Economic and Community Development, urged Warren Kremer Paino to drop the suit.

Bowen likely felt the impact of all the blogger attention as well. His district contains Camden, the home to the annual Pop!Tech conference. High-profile bloggers like TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington and Microsoft’s Robert Scoble both expressed reluctance to attend the October event in response to the lawsuit.

“This is no longer a policy disagreement. It’s no longer a suit. It’s reflecting poorly on the stateand doing potential harm to my district,” Bowen said ahead of the suit’s dismissal. “The people who come to PopTech are precisely the people we want here.”

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