Although Kim Kardashian says that her team’s use of a photo of the wrong man, with the same name, when posting a commentary about an inmate awaiting execution in Texas in early 2024 was an accident, the man whose image was shown says in new court papers that friends and strangers actually thought he was about to be put to death.
Kardashian’s attorneys have filed an anti-SLAPP motion brought in opposition to plaintiff Ivan Cantu’s Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit. Originally filed Feb. 20 to allege defamation, false light invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligence, the suit was amended May 28 to add a claim for misappropriation of likeness.
“In the days following the post, I received several online messages from strangers who believed that I was going to be executed,” Cantu says in a sworn declaration filed Wednesday with Judge Michael Small in opposition to Kardashian’s dismissal motion. “The post caused me to suffer embarrassment, humiliation, anxiety, emotional and mental anguish, headaches, loss of sleep, and loss of reputation.”
In the days following the post, Cantu was contacted by 40 to 45 friends thinking that he was in prison and scheduled to be executed, according to the plaintiff.
Cantu further says that he was especially sensitive at the time of the post because his mother died a month earlier.
“In addition to the other emotional injuries caused by the post, the extreme degree of unwanted attention and publicity I received because of Ms. Kardashian’s post significantly interfered with and disturbed my grieving process.”
Cantu says he contacted the socialite via Facebook asking her to remove the post, but that it remained up for a prolonged period of time.
But in her previously filed declaration, the 44-year-old Kardashian says she was quick to acknowledge the Feb. 26, 2024, photo posting mistake and take responsibility.
“I immediately instructed my team to delete the … story from Instagram and Facebook and they did so,” Kardashian says. “In a subsequent story that was posted on Instagram and Facebook that same day, I publicly apologized to plaintiff for the mistaken use of his photo.”
Kardashian says she continued to post stories about the inmate Ivan Cantu’s execution — which took place Feb. 28, 2024 — after the mistaken posting was deleted.
“Each of those subsequent stories used images of Mr. Cantu, not plaintiff,” Kardashian says.
According to Kardashian, during the past eight years she has used her resources and platform to lobby for criminal justice reform and advocate for those wrongfully convicted or subjected to allegedly disproportionate sentences. She cites President Donald Trump’s 2018 commutation of Alice Marie Johnson’s life sentence after the woman spent 22 years incarcerated for a non-violent drug offense.
In their court papers, Kardashian’s attorneys state that Cantu’s suit is “an attempt to cash in on a mistake that occurred in connection with, and as a direct result of, Ms. Kardashian’s exercise of her constitutional rights of free speech and petition.”
The state’s anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) law is intended to prevent people from using courts, and potential threats of a lawsuit, to intimidate those who are exercising their First Amendment rights. A hearing on Kardashian’s motion is scheduled Oct. 24.
Kardashian’s attorneys are asking the judge to dismiss the entire complaint, or at minimum those claims in which Cantu cannot show a probability of prevailing.
According to Cantu, he lives in New York with his wife and two daughters and is a senior project manager at OML Inc. He says he has never been arrested or convicted of a crime.