Eagles singer Don Henley has filed a lawsuit in New York seeking the return of his handwritten notes and song lyrics from the band's hit album Hotel California.
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The civil complaint filed in Manhattan federal court on Friday comes after prosecutors in March abruptly dropped criminal charges midway through a trial against three collectibles experts accused of scheming to sell the documents.
The Eagles co-founder has maintained the pages were stolen and had vowed to pursue a lawsuit when the criminal case was dropped against rare books 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-biggest selling album of all time in the US.
"These 100 pages of personal lyric sheets belong to Mr. Henley and his family, and he has never authorised defendants or anyone else to peddle them for profit," Daniel Petrocelli, Henley's lawyer, said in an emailed statement.
According to the lawsuit, the handwritten pages remain in the custody of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office.
Kosinski's lawyer Shawn Crowley said Henley is continuing to falsely accuse his client. He said the criminal charges against Kosinski were dropped after it became clear Henley misled prosecutors by withholding critical information proving that Kosinski bought 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 a lawsuit against Henley to hold him accountable for his repeated lies and misuse of the justice system."
During the trial, the men's lawyers argued that Henley gave the lyrics pages decades ago to a writer working on a never-published Eagles biography, who then sold the handwritten sheets to Horowitz. He, in turn, sold them to Inciardi and Kosinski, who started putting some of the pages up for auction in 2012.
The criminal case was abruptly dropped after prosecutors agreed that defence lawyers had essentially been blindsided by 6,000 pages of communications involving Henley and his attorneys and associates.
Prosecutors and the defence said they received the material only after Henley and his lawyers made a last-minute decision to waive their attorney-client privilege shielding legal discussions.
Judge Curtis Farber, who presided over the nonjury trial that opened in late February, said witnesses and their lawyers used attorney-client privilege "to obfuscate and hide information that they believed would be damaging" and that prosecutors "were apparently manipulated."
Australian Associated Press
