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Courtney Love in court over 'Boudoir Queen' Twitter bitchfight

Bony singer v modiste in tweet slap dress-bill smackdown

Courtney Love's Twitter broadsides against a fashion designer have earned her a date in a Los Angeles court, Reuters reports.

The target of the Hole singer's wrath was Dawn Simorangkir, aka the "Boudoir Queen", who had the temerity to "demand payment for a few thousand dollars worth of clothes".

Love was evidently unimpressed with the claim, and on 17 March 2009 entertained her 40,000 Twitter followers with allegations that Simorangkir was "a drug-pushing prostitute with a history of assault and battery who lost custody of her own child and capitalized on Love's fame before stealing from her", according to Reuters.

One tweet noted: "She has received a VAST amount of money from me over 40,000 dollars and I do not make people famous and get raped TOO!"

Simorangkir is claiming defamation, and on 18 January the pair will battle it out in court in a case likely to hinge on the First Amendment, and "whether an average Twitter user would interpret Love's vicious tweets as facts rather than merely her opinion".

While Simorangkir's attorney Bryan Freedman will argue that Love's outbursts "destroyed his client's fashion career, thus entitling her to potentially millions of dollars in damages", the star's legal rep James Janowitz insisted: "We don't believe there's any defamation, and even if there were defamatory statements, there was no damage."

Alonzo Wickers, "a defamation expert who has handled matters for such media clients as Comedy Central and TMZ", told Reuters: "I'll be interested to see if the court gives people posting on Twitter more latitude than other media.

"The way Twitter is evolving, it seems to be more of a means to express opinion. I would hope courts give tweets the same latitude as they do an op-ed piece or a letter to the editor."

Reuters has more on the adversaries' legal battle plans right here. ®

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