Lawsuit Against Britney Spears Tossed

Kevin Winter/Getty Images Britney Spears in October.

A Los Angeles judge has thrown out a lawsuit against the pop star Britney Spears, ruling there was a lack of evidence that her one-time confidante and self-styled manager had been wronged, Reuters reported.

“I really thought long and hard. It's the right thing to do, so I am going to do it,” the judge in Los Angeles Superior Court, Suzanne Bruguera, said on Thursday, after hearing two weeks of evidence in the civil trial.

The lawsuit was brought by Sam Lufti, a friend of Ms. Spears who claimed the singer had hired him as her manager in 2007 and early 2008. Mr. Lufti, 38, maintained in the suit that Ms. Spears owed him a port ion of her earnings.

He also said he had been defamed by the singer's mother, Lynne Spears, in a 2008 book, “Through the Storm.” Lynne Spears wrote that Mr. Lufti tried to control her daughter and cut her off from her family. In addition to the defamation charge, Mr. Lufti also claimed in the suit that he had been physically assaulted by Ms. Spears's father, Jamie Spears, in 2008 while the singer was in a Los Angeles psychiatric ward.

Judge Bruguera dismissed all these claims on Thursday, saying the evidence was too slim to support them. On the witness stand, Mr. Lufti broke down in tears and said he had done his best to wean the singer off drugs, even hiring a drug-sniffing dog to find a stash of illicit narcotics, which he said he had flushed down the toilet.

Mr. Lufti vowed to appeal the ruling.