Rehab center is suing Courtney Love over fees

A luxury rehabilitation center in Newport Beach has sued rocker Courtney Love for more than $180,000 for treatment she received after overdosing at a Hollywood nightclub in the summer of 2005.

Love, whose three-month live-in program at Beau Monde International began in August 2005, paid the center $10,000 after entering treatment, but has repeatedly refused to pay the rest, said the lawsuit, filed this month in Orange County Superior Court.

Beau Monde has asked for $182,286, plus costs, interest and legal fees, according to the breach of contract lawsuit, first reported by the Smoking Gun website.

Love, lead singer of the band Hole, checked into Beau Monde several weeks before a judge admonished her for violating her probation on past narcotics and assault charges when she overdosed at a fashion industry party.

The incident at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel came during an extended period of personal turmoil for the widow of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain.

She had pleaded no contest in 2004 to a misdemeanor assault charge for allegedly throwing a whiskey bottle at a woman who Love said was sleeping on her former boyfriend’s couch.

A year earlier, she had been arrested for allegedly breaking into the same boyfriend’s home. The singer and actress, lauded for her performance in the 1996 movie “The People vs. Larry Flynt,” later pleaded guilty to possessing the painkiller OxyContin without a proper prescription.

Though Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Rand Rubin had warned the singer that she was headed toward “rock bottom,” he sentenced her to drug treatment instead of jail -- in part because she had sought help.

Love’s $74,000-a-month contract with the oceanfront Beau Monde included therapy, life coaching, dietary planning and relaxation training, according to the contract, a copy of which was included in the suit.

The center, whose spokesman declined to comment, also provides feather beds, massages, creativity and recreation coaches, tai chi and acupuncture, according to its website.

In November, Nicole Richie, star of “The Simple Life,” checked in for 72 hours, according to published reports.

“It’s unfortunate a lawsuit was filed, as this matter is in the process of being resolved,” Love’s attorney, Howard Weitzman, wrote in an e-mail to The Times.

“Often parties have differing points of view on what may be owed, which is why lawsuits like this are settled quickly. It’s often not the ‘if’ but the ‘how much’ that seeds these types of disputes.”

In 2005, WMC Mortgage Corp. of Los Angeles filed for foreclosure on a historic Washington state home that Love owned.

Court documents filed in October 2004 said the singer had quit making mortgage payments the previous year.

ashley.powers@latimes.com