Kim Kardashian just scored a big legal win after a California judge tossed out a defamation lawsuit that accused her of causing “severe emotional distress” by accidentally posting a photo of the wrong guy and calling him a death row inmate.
Back in Feb 2024, the 44-year-old reality star — who is currently wrapped in controversy over her new lawyer show All’s Fair — shared a pic on social media to her millions of followers, thinking it showed Ivan Cantu — a Texas death row inmate who maintained his innocence for over 20 years before his execution on Feb 28, 2024.
Turns out, the man in the photo was actually another Ivan Cantu — a totally innocent New Yorker with the same name and zero connection to Texas.
The man ended up suing Kardashian in Feb 2025, claiming defamation, invasion of privacy, and “false light” over the viral mix-up.
His lawyer, Greg Sobo, argued that the post — seen by hundreds of millions — damaged his client’s reputation and caused lasting emotional harm.
“Social media is too often abused to bully the innocent, incite harm, and injure our communities,” Sobo told The Daily Mail in February.
“Just like those who cause physical harm should be held accountable, those who cause injuries to innocent victims through social media must also be held responsible. If anyone should know the power of social media, it is Ms. Kim Kardashian.”
According to his LinkedIn, Cantu works as a Senior Project Manager for Oliver Agency at Morgan Stanley and has never been arrested or convicted of anything.
But in a major win for Kim, LA Superior Court Judge Michael Small threw out the case this week on free speech grounds, saying Cantu hadn’t proven he suffered any real damage from the post.
Judge Small, who heard arguments on Kim’s anti-SLAPP motion back on Oct 14, sided with her on Wednesday. He found that California’s anti-SLAPP law — which protects people from lawsuits aimed at silencing free speech — clearly applied to Kim’s situation.
“The hitch for the plaintiff is that he failed to provide out that he suffered any injury as a result of Kardashian’s misappropriation of his likeness,” the judge wrote.
In his declaration, Cantu claimed he was flooded with messages from strangers who thought he was about to be executed. He said Kim’s post left him dealing with “embarrassment, humiliation, anxiety, emotional and mental anguish, headaches, loss of sleep, and loss of reputation”.
He also said the unwanted attention “significantly interfered” with his grieving process, as he’d lost his mother just a month earlier.
Kim, who’s spent years studying law and pushing for criminal justice reform, was quick to acknowledge the mix-up.
“I immediately instructed my team to delete the Story from Instagram and Facebook, and they did so,” she said in court documents. “In a subsequent Story that same day, I publicly apologised to the plaintiff for the mistaken use of his photo.”
She pointed out that the wrong photo was only up for “a few hours” before she took it down, and that she later continued posting about the other Ivan Cantu’s execution — this time using the right images.
At the time, her lawyer Michael Rhodes told The Daily Mail: “It was a simple mistake of using the public photo of another man with the same name to promote Kim’s longstanding commitment to the cause of criminal-justice reform. The image was taken down almost immediately once the error was discovered”.
Kardashian’s legal team said they believed Cantu’s lawsuit was “an attempt to cash in on a mistake that occurred in connection with Ms. Kardashian’s exercise of her constitutional rights of free speech and petition”.
As for Kim’s new show All’s Fair, the director has just spoken out in defence of the show following heinous reviews.
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