The woman who photographed Mayor LaToya Cantrell and her then-bodyguard while they shared dinner together on the patio of a French Quarter restaurant wins her battle in court against Cantrell.
An Orleans Parish Civil Court judge dismissed Cantrell's temporary restraining order against Anne Breaud and denied her request for a permanent order requiring Breaud to remain at least 100 feet away from Cantrell at all times. Breaud's attorney, Justin Schmidt, argued that his client had a First Amendment right to photograph two public officials--the mayor and an on-duty police officer--while they were in a public setting.
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"This was a constitutional activity that the mayor was trying to squash or quell," Schmidt told WWL's Newell Normand. "Anne Breaud was doing nothing more than what she should have been doing. She saw something that was out of the ordinary for what she felt in her gut was not right. She did something about it. She took a picture (and) reported it to the Metropolitan Crime Commission."
In addition to quashing the restraining order, the judge also ordered Cantrell to cover Breaud's court costs, citing the state's anti-SLAPP suit law for that ruling.
"The judge instructed me to prepare an affidavit with my legal fees, as they are due under the statute," Schmidt said.
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Schmidt says the legal fight between Breaud and Cantrell is far from over.
"There was private information released to the mayor that was included in her petition that wouldn't be ordinarily available to regular citizens," Schmidt said.
According to Schmidt, that information that Cantrell included in her petition for the restraining order included Breaud's social security number, an old official photograph, and her date of birth. Schmidt added that that information was left unredacted.
"Those are still big questions that we have to figure out: How exactly did the mayor get that information?" Schmidt said. "We still have the ability to go forward with those and address those issues."
Breaud concurred with Schmidt, saying she will indeed pursue a counterclaim against Cantrell.
"It's kept me from doing the things that I normally do," Breaud said of the restraining order petition. "My personal information being out there is very discouraging, and I thought about leaving for a while, but we prevailed."
Cantrell was not present in court during Tuesday's hearing.
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