A judge has dismissed on free-speech grounds a lawsuit filed by a man who sued Kim Kardashian after his photo was mistakenly used when the socialite posted a commentary about an inmate by the same name awaiting execution in Texas in early 2024, saying the plaintiff had not shown he suffered any damages.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael Small had heard arguments on Kardashian’s anti-SLAPP motion on Oct. 14 and took the issues under submission before ruling in her favor on Wednesday. Originally filed Feb. 20 to allege defamation, false light invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligence, Cantu’s suit was amended May 28 to add a claim for misappropriation of likeness.
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.
“The hitch for the plaintiff is that he failed to provide sufficient evidence that he suffered any injury as a result of Kardashian’s misappropriation of his likeness,” Small wrote, adding that Cantu only offered a declaration alleging that he suffered emotional distress and damage to his reputation.
Cantu’s declaration read in part as follows:
“In the days following the post, I received several online messages from strangers who believed that I was going to be executed,” Cantu said. “The post caused me to suffer embarrassment, humiliation, anxiety, emotional and mental anguish, headaches, loss of sleep and loss of reputation.”
Cantu further said 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 said he contacted Kardashian via Facebook asking her to remove the post, but that her commentary remained up for a while. But in her previously filed declaration, the 45-year-old Kardashian said 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 said. “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 said 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 said.
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 stated that Cantu’s suit was “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.”
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.