NEW YORK (AP) — Eagles singer Don Henley filed a lawsuit in New York on Friday to get his father back Handwritten notes and song lyrics From the band’s album “Hotel California”.
The civil complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan comes after prosecutors in March abruptly dropped criminal charges in the middle of the trial of three antiquities experts accused of plotting to sell the documents.
The Eagles co-founder confirmed that the pages were stolen and vowed to pursue a lawsuit when the criminal case against rare book dealer Glenn Horowitz, former Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Craig Inchardi, and rock memorabilia seller Edward Kosinski was dropped.
“Hotel California”, released by the Eagles in 1977, is Third best selling album All time in the United States
“These 100 pages of personal lyrics belong to Mr. Henley and his family, and he never authorized the defendants or anyone else to promote them for profit,” Henley’s attorney, Daniel Petrucelli, said in an emailed statement Friday.
According to the lawsuit, the handwritten pages remain in the custody of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, which declined to comment Friday on the lawsuit.
Kosinski and Inciardi’s lawyers dismissed the legal action as baseless, noting that the criminal case was dropped after Henley was found to have misled prosecutors by withholding critical information.
“Don Henley is desperate to rewrite history,” Kosinski’s attorney, Sean Crowley, said in an emailed statement. “We look forward to filing a lawsuit against Henley to hold him accountable for his repeated lies and abuse of the justice system.”
Inciarte’s attorney, Stacey Richman, said in a separate statement that the lawsuit attempts to “bully” and “perpetuate a false narrative.”
An attorney for Horowitz, who is not being named as a defendant because he does not claim ownership of the materials, did not respond to an email seeking comment.
During the trial, the men’s lawyers alleged that Henley had given the lyrics pages decades earlier to a writer who had worked on Eagles’ never-published biography Horowitz then sold the handwritten pages, which he in turn sold to Inciardi and Kosinski, who began offering some of the pages for auction in 2012.
The criminal case was abruptly dropped after prosecutors agreed that defense lawyers were blindsided by about 6,000 pages of communications belonging to Henley, his lawyers and associates.
Prosecutors and the defense said they received the materials only after Henley and his attorneys made a last-minute decision to waive attorney-client privilege to protect legal discussions.
Judge Curtis Farber, who presided over the trial that began without a jury in late February, said witnesses and their attorneys used attorney-client privilege “to obscure and conceal information they believed would be damaging” and that prosecutors “appeared to have been manipulated.”
___
Associated Press correspondent in New York Jennifer Peltz contributed to this report.
___
Follow Philippe Marcelo at Twitter.com/philmarcelo.
“Infuriatingly humble web fan. Writer. Alcohol geek. Passionate explorer. Evil problem solver. Incurable zombie expert.”
