NEW YORK — Eagles singer Don Henley filed a lawsuit in New York on Friday seeking the return of his handwritten notes and lyrics from the band’s hit album “Hotel California.”
The civil complaint, filed in federal court in Manhattan, comes after prosecutors abruptly dropped criminal charges in March, midway through a trial of three collectibles experts accused of plotting to sell the documents.
The Eagles co-founder has maintained that the pages were stolen and vowed to file a lawsuit after the criminal case against rare book dealer Glenn Horowitz, former Rock & Craig Inciardi, curator of the Roll Hall of Fame, and Edward Kosinski, rock memorabilia seller.
Released by the Eagles in 1977, “Hotel California” is the third best-selling album all time in the US
“These 100 pages of personal lyrics are the property of Mr. Henley and his family, and he has never authorized Defendants or anyone else to sell them for profit,” Daniel Petrocelli, Henley’s attorney, said in an e-mail Friday. -email statement.
According to the lawsuit, the handwritten pages are still in the possession of the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. The office declined to comment on the lawsuit Friday.
Kosinski’s attorney Shawn Crowley said Henley continues to falsely accuse his client. He said the criminal charges against Kosinski were dropped after it became clear that Henley had misled prosecutors by withholding critical information that showed Kosinski had 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 filing a lawsuit against Henley to hold him accountable for his repeated lies and abuse of the legal system.”
Attorneys for Inciardi and Horowitz did not immediately comment, though Horowitz is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit because he does not claim ownership of the materials.
During the trial, the men’s lawyers argued that Henley had given the text pages decades ago to a writer working on a film never published Eagles biography and later sold the handwritten sheets to Horowitz. He in turn sold them to Inciardi and Kosinski, who began putting some of the pages up for auction in 2012.
The criminal case was abruptly dropped after prosecutors acknowledged that defense attorneys had in fact been surprised by 6,000 pages of communications involving Henley and his attorneys and associates.
Prosecutors and the defense said they received the material only after Henley and his lawyers made a last-minute decision to waive their attorney-client privilege to shield legal discussions.
Judge Curtis Farber, who presided over the non-jury trial that started in late February, said witnesses and their attorneys used legal privilege “to cover up and conceal information they believed would be damaging” 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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Succeed Philip Marcelo twitter.com/philmarcelo.