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A federal judge in Los Angeles on Monday refused to block the release of Steven Spielberg’s “Amistad,” saying the filmmaker did not appear to have plagiarized a novel about a mutiny aboard a slave ship. U.S. District Court Judge Audrey Collins rejected a move by Barbara Chase-Riboud that sought to stop the film’s Wednesday premiere in New York and Los Angeles but allowed her lawsuit to proceed. The author claimed much of the “Amistad” screenplay was stolen from her 1989 book “Echo of Lions. In turn, DreamWorks studio is attacking the integrity of the award-winning novelist who filed the lawsuit. The book chronicles a real-life 1839 slave ship rebellion led by a Sierra Leone slave named Joseph Cinque and the resulting landmark legal case.
