Judge Dismisses Suit Against Garcia Marquez

A federal judge in Los Angeles dismissed a lawsuit Monday against Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who was accused of violating a contract to make a movie from his novel, “Love in the Time of Cholera.”

U.S. District Judge Manuel L. Real threw out the case after apparently finding that the Colombian author had never entered into an enforceable contract with producer Richard Roth to make a movie based on the best-selling book, attorneys said.

On Dec. 16, Roth sued Marquez and his literary agent in Spain, accusing them of interfering with his contract by demanding that he use a “Latin American director.” Roth claimed that such insistence meant Roth was “unable to secure financing for filming.”

Lawyers for Marquez, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982, contended that while the author negotiated a movie deal with Roth, he never turned over rights to film the novel.