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This archival content was written, edited, and published prior to LAist's acquisition by its current owner, Southern California Public Radio ("SCPR"). Content, such as language choice and subject matter, in archival articles therefore may not align with SCPR's current editorial standards. To learn more about those standards and why we make this distinction, please click here.

Arts & Entertainment

Judge Rules Frances Bean Doesn't Know Enough About Defamation Case Against Courtney Love to Go on Record About It

courtney-love-300px-2011.jpg
Courtney Love in 2011 (Jaguar PS / Shutterstock.com)

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The judge presiding over the defamation case filed against Courtney Love by her former lawyers has ruled that Love's adult daughter Frances Bean Cobain cannot give a deposition since she does not have sufficient knowledge of or documents pertaining to the case.Love is accused of tweeting in June 2010 that her ex-attorney Rhonda Holmes of San Diego's Gordon & Holmes had accepted a bribe.

Near the end of the Gordon & Holmes's representation of Love, a time span that in total lasted from December 2008 to May 2009, Holmes found herself the spotlight of a few of Love's rants, as the Hole frontwoman lambasted her legal team. Love, who had been asked to lay off "any and all substance abuse," while Gordon & Holmes worked with her, Tweeted on her off-again-on-again Twitter account that she was "fucking devastated (sic) when Rhonda J Holmes Esq of San Diego was bought off." Just over a year later, an interview finds Love saying Holmes "disappeared" and would not return her calls.

Gordon & Holmes had hoped Cobain would give a deposition. "I am informed and believe that Cobain has been an alleged victim of false statements made by ... Love on Twitter, the same social media platform on which Love made the defamatory statements at issue in this case,'' Gordon said in a sworn declaration, reports City News Service.

But Cobain won't be involved in the G&H case against Love, and Judge Ramona See made the final ruling on the matter Tuesday.

Twitter certainly has cost Love a pretty penny; in March 2011, Love was ordered to pay over $400,000 in a settlement for calling a designer an "asswipe nasty lying hosebag thief" on Twitter.

Among the subject matter Love allegedly tweeted involving Cobain include allegations former Nirvana member Dave Grohl made sexual advances on the 20-year-old artist and daughter of the late Kurt Cobain.

The G&H suit against Love basically says the musician/actress was a bully who used Twitter to spread lies. Or, as the suit puts it:

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"Love intended to communicate to others the false statement about Holmes which wrongly accused plaintiffs of engaging in improper, immoral, illegal, criminal and unethical conduct. Because plaintiffs inflamed Love by refusing to revive their legal services agreement with her, Love retaliated by using her enormous power and influence as a celebrity -- and the Internet as an effective and widespread broadcasting tool -- to inflict permanent harm upon Holmes and her firm."

According to Gordon, Cobain stated, "Twitter should ban my mother.'' Indeed, that remark appears in a statement issued this spring by Cobain in response to the allegations her mother made about Grohl.

Previously
Love & Her Battlefield: Lawyer's Libel Lawsuit Likely to Proceed
Courtney Love's Big Tweetin' Mouth Gets Her Sued. Again.

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