In retrospect, this was probably inevitable. After all, you can only pound away at the keys with your spatulate fingers for so long, twittering four or five million words of horribly misspelled stream-of-consciousness vitriol out to pretty much the whole damn world, before someone gets fed up with your nonsense and decides to sue your ass off. And so Courtney Love has become one of the first people to be sued for defamation of character via Twitter. The suit was filed by fashion designer Dawn Simorangkir, after she foolishly suggested Love ought to pay for a few thousand dollars worth of clothes she “bought” from her. Love took to her Twitter and responded thusly:

Love’s tweets, which instantly landed in the Twitter feeds of her 40,000 or so followers (and countless others via retweets), announced 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.

And so on, for roughly 40 text messages. Simorangkir’s lawyer says the case will set a precedent for whether tweets are to be held to a lower standard of accuracy than other communications, and he and his client are asking millions in damages. (Love is hoping to get out of this with something resembling an insanity plea. Seriously.) It’s a high price to pay, but if that’s what it takes to drive Courtney Love out of the texting business then I’m ready to see her pay it.