Summary: What happens in the courtroom is decided by a judge and jury, not followers on Twitter or other social platforms but celebrities are often more focused on the public’s opinion of them and in the end cause more damage.
There is a reason most companies and institutions won’t publicly comment on a case that is legally active. Celebrities have a harder time keeping their mouths shut when either being sued or suing someone. Twitter is most often the outlet they turn to with comments.
Read Kathleen Zellner Turns to Twitter to Defend ‘Making a Murderer’ Subject for an example of someone famous using Facebook to defend their actions.
The traditional yet unofficial rule of celebrity litigation is to never speak about an ongoing legal case. However, this “rule” gets broken often because public opinion for celebrities is everything. Social media outlets like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are changing the once observed rules that lawyers made their clients follow in order to prevent more trouble from growing or surfacing during an open case.
Serving as the legal counsel for celebrities is a challenge, especially when they don’t keep their mouths shut. As entertainment and sports lawyer Lisa E. Davis says, “My hard rule would be not to say anything about any disputes that you’re involved in, in any kind of media. With social media, the rules are no different than they used to be for newspapers. The difference, of course, is that it’s not mediated by any editors, and even though you can quote-unquote delete it, you really can’t get rid of it.”
This celebrity should have avoided Twitter: Statement on Twitter Lands Courtney Love in Court.
The importance of not saying anything regarding current litigation is that it can lead to more lawsuits. An example of this was when hip-hop artist Future took to Twitter and radio interviews to slander is ex, Ciara. He ended up with a $15 million defamation lawsuit. Another celebrity that saw his posts backfire was rapper 50 Cent. He had filed for bankruptcy but started posting phots to Instagram and was ordered back to bankruptcy court. The judge voiced concerns “about allegations of nondisclosure or a lack of transparency in the case.”
Read 50 Cent’s Bankruptcy Will Not Prevent Sex Tape Case from Progressing to learn about 50 Cent’s legal problems.
There is no delete button with the Internet. Once anyone, especially a celebrity with thousands of followers, puts something out there, it will always exist.
Source: http://jezebel.com/how-dumb-is-it-legally-for-a-celebrity-to-tweet-while-1761084039
Photo: dailymail.co.uk