Celebrity fitness instructor Michelle Bridges has lost an AVO application against a paparazzo she claims left her feeling threatened and violated.
Ms Bridges did not appear at Sydney's Downing Centre Local Court on Friday when magistrate Joanne Keogh dismissed the application against photographer Liam Benoit Mendes.
She believed that while his behaviour had annoyed and frustrated the former Biggest Loser host, it had not made her genuinely fearful.
Ms Keogh also said a court could not "regulate behaviour so that someone is courteous" and that being startled once did not establish fear.
Ms Bridges, a 46-year-old mother of one, previously told the court she felt "threatened" and "violated" while being photographed on several occasions.
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These included when she was grocery shopping and leaving a restaurant with her family.
Outside court, Mr Mendes said the magistrate's decision was important in allowing paparazzi and the media to do their jobs.
"If someone of public interest doesn't want to have their photo taken or be in the public eye, even though they are out there looking for it, we still have got that right to go out there and do that," he said.
Ms Bridges' management said the fitness personality accepted the public interest in her life but not at the expense of her family's safety.
"Michelle has always acknowledged there is a positive synergy between her profile, the media and her business, and she fully accepts that paparazzi take pictures of her and her family in her private life," Chic Talent Management said in a statement.
"In this instance, however, where her family, and in particular her child and partner's children, were put into a precariously dangerous situation, the intrusion became totally unacceptable."
