Courtney Love GG
Love was facing a $8million charge in the case

It's been almost four years, but Courtney Love has finally seen the end of what has been dubbed the 'twibel' court case. The rock chick was found not guilty in the first ever Twitter libel case, after San Diego attorney Rhonda Holmes filed a $8 million lawsuit against the Hole singer after she claimed Holmes was “bought off” in a tweet from June 2010.

Love had appeared in court to give her defence on Wednesday, 22 January, when she claimed to be a “computer retard” at the time of the tweet, stating that she was unsure of how to send direct messages through Twitter, which resulted in her hitting out against her former lawyer in plain view of her many Twitter followers. At the end of an 8-day trial, the Hole singer was not present on Friday's (24 Jan.) verdict reading, but judging by her elated tweets she was more than happy with how the case went.


Love and Holmes first became acquainted in late 2008 so that the lawyer could help Love track down other lawyers and accountants who she believed were "looting" her late husband Kurt Cobain's estate. Holmes claimed in her lawsuit that their relationship became strained after she asked Love to remain clean and sober throughout their investigative case, which made Love "angry" and prompted her to "retaliate" through the micro-blogging site.

This is the first ever instance where a person has been sued for libel because of a comment on Twitter. Since the case was filed against Love, there have been subsequent court cases involving content posted on to Twitter, most notably the libel case against Sally Bercow by Conservative peer Lord McAlpine last year. Bercow, the wife of Commons speaker John Bercow, agreed to pay McAlpine £15,000 in damages to McAlpine after she, along with many other users of the social media site, had claimed that the peer was a pedophile following a Newsnight report suggesting that he had participated in child sex acts. The case became the first Twitter libel case to be settled in the High Court. Bercow maintains that her tweet "was not a libellous tweet - just foolish.”

Courtney Love
Love was found not guilty in the historic case