Eagles singer 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 Hotel California album.
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 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, Mr Henley’s lawyer, said in an emailed statement on Friday.
According to the lawsuit, the handwritten pages remain in the custody of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, which did not immediately comment on the litigation.
Mr Kosinski’s lawyer Shawn Crowley said Mr Henley is continuing to falsely accuse his client. He said the criminal charges against Mr Kosinski were dropped after it became clear Mr Henley misled prosecutors by withholding critical information proving that Mr Kosinski bought the pages in good faith.
“Don Henley is desperate to rewrite history,” Mr 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.”
Lawyers for Mr Inciardi and Mr Horowitz did not immediately comment, though Mr Horowitz is not named as a defendant in the suit as he does not claim ownership of the materials.
During the trial, the men’s lawyers argued that Mr Henley gave the lyrics pages decades ago to a writer who worked on a never-published Eagles biography and later sold the handwritten sheets to Mr Horowitz. He, in turn, sold them to Mr Inciardi and Mr 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 Mr Henley and his lawyers and associates.
Prosecutors and the defence said they received the material only after Mr Henley and his lawyers made a last-minute decision to waive their lawyer-client privilege shielding legal discussions.
Judge Curtis Farber, who presided over the non-jury trial that opened in late February, said witnesses and their lawyers used lawyer-client privilege “to obfuscate and hide information that they believed would be damaging” and that prosecutors “were apparently manipulated”.