Comedian Roseanne Barr admitted she tweeted out the home address of George Zimmerman’s parents, but the former sitcom star claims it was sent accidentally. The star’s own Twitter history suggests that isn’t the case.
Barr’s five-person legal team is helping her battle a lawsuit by Robert Zimmerman Sr. and Gladys Zimmerman who accuse her of “violating their privacy and intentionally inflicting emotional distress” with that tweet.
The comedian said in court paperwork revealed this week that she meant to send the tweet containing the Zimmeran’s home address to just one person, not her entire Twitter network. Her legal team is asking a Florida judge to dismiss the Zimmermans’ suit seeking unspecified damages.
i was actually going2 tweet the person who sent it2 me& tell them to take it down! But i hit retweet instead. Deletd in 5 sec,” she wrote March 29, according to paperwork filed with the court.
Even though she published their Lake Mary address and phone number, her lawyers wrote, she’s not liable for damages because she was merely putting out facts that were widely available elsewhere, including in the phone book, on the Internet and from the Seminole County Property Appraiser….
In their suit, the Zimmermans allege that after Barr tweeted their address, they were forced to flee their home in the middle of the night and live in hiding.
But that does not jibe with what Robert Zimmerman Sr. told the Orlando Sentinel in an interview two weeks earlier, on March 15, 2012. He said then that he and his wife were already living in hiding.
Barr’s account doesn’t match what she later sent out via social media following the tweet in question. Breitbart News reported on a follow-up tweet delivered after the address tweet in which she threatened to “rt” or “retweet/resend” the address if the couple’s son wasn’t arrested.
The son, George Zimmerman, was cleared of murder charges in the 2012 death of Florida teen Trayvon Martin.