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Love countersues former lawyer in ongoing defamation case

By | Published on Wednesday 18 September 2013

Courtney Love

So, now Courtney Love is countersuing the lawyer who sued her in 2011 over allegations of Twitter defamation. Love is claiming that the litigious lawyer also defamed her in a 2009 letter. The lawyer claims the letter is a fake. Ah, good times.

As previously reported, attorney Rhonda Holmes worked for Love for a time after the singer claimed the estate of her late husband Kurt Cobain was being mismanaged, and that individuals unknown were stealing from the late Nirvana frontman’s assets and posthumous earnings, in doing so ripping off her and the couple’s daughter Frances Bean.

But Love and Holmes then fell out, with the Hole singer taking to Twitter to announce that she had fired the legal lady because she had been “bought off” by the very people she was meant to be investigating over the mishandling of the Cobain estate. Holmes, who strongly denied those claims, subsequently sued for defamation.

That case is ongoing, though reps for Holmes say an out of court settlement was initially reached, but Love breached the terms of the deal by going on the Howard Stern radio show and discussing the dispute. So now Love is seeking court approval to counter sue over a letter Holmes allegedly sent to Frances Bean in 2009 and which, Love says, she’s only discovered as a result of preparing to defend herself against the original defamation litigation.

In the letter, Holmes seems to tell Cobain Junior, sixteen at the time, that she is representing her interests as well as those of Love, and explains that she is working to track down and prosecute “people and entities who have been stealing from and pillaging your late Father’s estate since the day he passed away”.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the letter goes on: “You are ALL the unfortunate victims of a very large and very scary conspiracy. I have personally experienced the reach and criminality of these thieves, they have hacked into my PCs (on one such occasion, to make my legal brief in this very case ‘disappear’), used my credit cards all over the county; and accessed/drained my savings account”.

Love says that Holmes had no right to send the letter, that the lawyer was not representing Frances Bean at the time, and that the correspondence contained “unduly personal”, “bizarre” and “solicitous” statements that caused the breakdown of Love’s relationship with her daughter, and with Cobain’s mother and sister who became France Bean’s legal guardians.

In late 2009 a restraining order stopped Love from contacting her daughter, and it subsequently emerged shortly after that the singer lost control of the company that manages the late Cobain’s publicity rights.

If her countersuit goes ahead, Love will seek damages for the statements made in the letter and the emotional distress it caused in contributing to the breakdown of her relationship with her daughter. But legal reps for Holmes reportedly claim that their client didn’t write the letter in question, with allegations Love herself may have penned it. And her attorneys told the Reporter “we view this as an act of desperation”.

So that’s all fun. More to come we suspect.



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