NEW YORK — Eagles frontman Don Henley filed a lawsuit in New York on Friday seeking the return of his handwritten notes and song lyrics from the band’s hit album “Hotel California”.
The civil complaint filed in Manhattan federal court comes after prosecutors in March abruptly dropped criminal charges in the middle of a trial against three collections experts accused of conspiring to sell the documents.
The Eagles co-founder claimed the pages were stolen and vowed to take legal action when the criminal case was dropped against rare book dealer Glenn Horowitz, formerly of Rock & Roll Hall of Fame curator Craig Inciardi and rock memorabilia seller Edward Kosinski.
“Hotel California”, released by the Eagles in 1977, is the third best-selling album of all time in the USA
“These 100 pages of personal lyrics belong to Mr. Henley and his family, and he never authorized the defendants or anyone else to sell them for profit,” said Daniel Petrocelli, Henley’s attorney, in an emailed statement. mail on Friday.
According to the lawsuit, the handwritten pages remain in the custody of the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who declined to comment on the litigation Friday.
Kosinski’s attorney, Shawn Crowley, said Henley continues to falsely accuse his client. He said criminal charges against Kosinski were dropped after it became clear that Henley misled prosecutors by withholding critical information that proved Kosinski purchased the pages in good faith.
“Don Henley is desperate to rewrite history,” Crowley said in his statement. “We look forward to litigating this case and bringing legal action against Henley to hold him accountable for his repeated lies and misuse of the justice system.”
Attorneys for Inciardi and Horowitz did not immediately comment, although Horowitz is not named as a defendant in the suit because he does not claim ownership of the materials.
During the trial, the men’s lawyers argued that Henley gave the lyric pages decades ago to a writer who worked at a Never published biography of the Eagles and later sold the manuscript sheets to Horowitz. He, in turn, sold them to Inciardi and Kosinski, who began putting some pages up for auction in 2012.
The criminal case was abruptly dropped after prosecutors agreed that defense attorneys had been blindsided by 6,000 pages of communications involving Henley and his lawyers and associates.
Prosecutors and the defense said they received the material only after Henley and his lawyers made a last-minute decision to waive the attorney-client privilege that protected legal discussions.
Judge Curtis Farber, who presided over the non-jury trial that began in late February, said witnesses and their attorneys used attorney-client privilege “to obfuscate and conceal information that they believed would be prejudicial” and that prosecutors “were apparently manipulated.”
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Associated Press reporter Jennifer Peltz in New York contributed to this report.
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Follow Filipe Marcelo on twitter.com/philmarcelo.
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