i guess we knew it had to happen eventually. the first social media defamation lawsuit. no doubt. twitter s less than ten years old, but with 58 million tweets a day, it s pretty surprising it took this long. and this case might have all of us thinking before we tweet. knbc s miriam hernandez reports from los angeles. reporter: rock singer courtney love takes the stand. she testified the tweet landing her in court was private. she denied she aimed to hurt the reputation of her former lawyer ronda holmes. displayed for the jury, it says holmes was bought off. the plaintiff said that s word that holmes accepted a bribe to turn against her client, courtney love. according to holmes lawyer says one tweet damaged holmes correct and her business. this has gone out to courtney love s twitter army of 40,000 users at the time. she s repeated it in other places. and you just never know, people don t call you up and say, hey, i was going to come be a client of yours but i heard you got
of yours but i heard you got bought off and i wouldn t come anymore. they just stop coming. reporter: social media experts say this case is a reminder tweets are public, even if you think you re communicating with just one person. this professor teaches media at usc. when we think something was temporary and only for that moment, there s a permanent rofrd it and that record can come back to haunt us. reporter: whether the case could potentially impact other twitter users, we asked freedom of speech expert from this law school. any time a person says something that is a false statement of fact that hurts somebody else s reputation, it could be defamation whether it is oral or printed in the newspaper or if it s printed in a new medium like twitter. reporter: but the case he says probably won t set any precedent. legally speaking, i think it would just be one defamation case out of many. reporter: love s defense was that it was the holmes lawsuit that publicized the tweet,
i guess we knew it had to happen eventually. the first social media defamation lawsuit. no doubt. twitter s less than ten years old, but with 58 million tweets a day, it s pretty surprising it took this long. and this case might have all of us thinking before we tweet. knbc s miriam hernandez reports from los angeles. reporter: rock singer courtney love takes the stand. she testified the tweet landing her in court was private. she denied the reputation of her former lawyer ronda holmes. it said holmes was bought off. the plaintiff said that s word that holmes accepted a bribe to turn against her client, courtney love. according to holmes lawyer says one tweet damaged holmes credibility and her business. this has gone out to courtney love s twitter army of 40,000 users at the time. she s repeated it in other places. and you just never know, people don t call you up and say, hey, i was going to come be a client
bought off so i m not going to come anymore. they just stop coming. reporter: social media experts say this case is a reminder tweets are public, even if you think you re communicating with just one person. professor karen north teaches social media at usc. when we think something was temporary and only for that moment, there s a permanent record of it and that record can come back to haunt us. reporter: whether the case could potentially impact other twitter users, we asked freedom of speech expert professor kaplan from this law school. any time a person says something that is a false statement of fact that hurts somebody else s reputation, it could be defamation whether it is oral or printed in the newspaper or if it s printed in a new medium like twitter. reporter: but the case he says probably will not set any precedent. legally speaking, i think it would just be one defamation case out of many. reporter: love s defense was that it was the holmes lawsuit that publiciz