Eagles Singer Don Henley Sues Over Return of Handwritten ‘Hotel California’ Lyrics

NEW YORK (AP) — Eagles singer Don Henley filed a lawsuit in New York 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 midway through a trial against three collectibles experts accused of conspiring to sell the documents.

The Eagles co-founder claimed the pages were stolen and vowed to sue when the criminal case was dropped against rare book dealer Glenn Horowitz, former 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 United States

“These 100 pages of personal words belong to Mr. Henley and his family, and he never authorized the defendants or anyone else to sell them for profit,” Daniel Petrocelli, Henley’s attorney, said in a statement. statement emailed 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 litigation.

Lawyers for Kosinski and Inciardi have dismissed the lawsuit as meritless, noting that the criminal case was dismissed after it was determined that Henley misled prosecutors by withholding critical information.

“Don Henley is desperate to rewrite history,” Kosinski’s attorney Shawn Crowley said in an emailed statement. “We look forward to litigating this case and bringing a lawsuit against Henley to hold him accountable for his repeated lies and misuse of the justice system.”

Inciardi’s attorney, Stacey Richman, said in a separate statement that the lawsuit was intended to “intimidate” and “perpetuate a false narrative.”

Horowitz’s attorney, who is not named as a defendant because he does not claim ownership of the documents, did not respond to an email seeking comment.

During the trial, the men’s lawyers argued that Henley gave the lyric pages decades ago to a writer who was working on a Unpublished Eagles biography and then sold the manuscript sheets to Horowitz, who then sold them to Inciardi and Kosinski, who began auctioning some pages in 2012.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, his lawyers and associates.

Prosecutors and the defense said they received the documents only after Henley and his lawyers made a last-minute decision to waive their attorney-client privilege protecting legal discussions.

Judge Curtis Farber, who presided over the non-jury trial that began in late February, said witnesses and their lawyers used attorney-client privilege “to obscure and hide information they believed was damaging” and that prosecutors “appeared to have been manipulated.”

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Associated Press reporter Jennifer Peltz in New York contributed to this report.

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Follow Philip Marcelo on twitter.com/philmarcelo.