Charges are dropped midtrial in ‘Hotel California’ lyrics case. Don Henley plans to fight on
New York prosecutors abruptly dropped their criminal case midtrial Wednesday against three men who had been accused of conspiring to possess a cache of hand-drafted lyrics to “Hotel California” and other Eagles hits. (March 6) (AP Video: Joseph B. Frederick)

Photos
7
BY JENNIFER PELTZ
Updated 5:55 PM EST, March 6, 2024
Share
NEW YORK (AP) — From the start, the case was highly unusual: a criminal prosecution centered on the disputed ownership of a cache of hand-drafted lyrics to “Hotel California” and other Eagles hits.

Its end was even more unexpected.

In the middle of trial, New York prosecutors abruptly dropped their case Wednesday against three collectibles experts who had been accused of scheming to hang onto and peddle the pages, which Eagles co-founder Don Henley maintained were stolen, private artifacts of the band’s creative process.

In explaining the stunning turnabout, prosecutors agreed that defense lawyers had essentially been blindsided by 6,000 pages of communications involving Henley and his attorneys and associates. Prosecutors and the defense got the material only in the past few days, after Henley and his lawyers apparently made a late-in-the-game decision to waive their attorney-client privilege shielding legal discussions.



0:00 / 53
AP AUDIO: Charges are dropped midtrial in ‘Hotel California’ lyrics case. Don Henley plans to fight on
AP correspondent Margie Szaroleta reports on an abrupt end to the trial involving lyrics by The Eagles.

“These delayed disclosures revealed relevant information that the defense should have had the opportunity to explore” when Henley and other prosecution witnesses testified late last month, Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Aaron Ginandes told the court.

READ MORE
Musician Don Henley leaves the courthouse in New York, Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2024. The Eagles co-founder testified this week in the criminal trial of three collectibles dealers charged with conspiring to own and attempt to sell handwritten draft lyrics to “Hotel California” and other Eagles hits without the right to do so. The men have pleaded not guilty. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Don Henley wraps up testimony in Eagles lyric sheets case, saying they were his property
Musician Don Henley returns to court after a break in New York, Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024. Henley resumed testifying Tuesday in a trial over handwritten drafts of lyrics to some of the Eagles' biggest hits, including “Hotel California," and his decade-long effort to reclaim the pages. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
In court, Don Henley recounts the making of the Eagles’ megahit ‘Hotel California’
FILE - Members of The Eagles, from left, Timothy B. Schmit, Don Henley, Glenn Frey and Joe Walsh pose with an autographed guitar after a news conference at the Sundance Film Festival, in Park City, Utah, Jan. 19, 2013. Henley, the co-founder of classic rock band the Eagles, is scheduled to testify Monday, Feb. 26, 2024, at the criminal trial of three collectibles professionals. They're charged with colluding to veil the questioned ownership of sheets of draft lyrics to “Hotel California” and other Eagles hits in order to sell them and deflect Henley’s demands for their return. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)
Eagles’ Don Henley quizzed at lyrics trial about time a naked 16-year-old girl overdosed at his home
With that, rare books dealer Glenn Horowitz, former Rock & Roll Hall of Fame curator Craig Inciardi and rock memorabilia seller Edward Kosinski were cleared of all the charges. They had included conspiracy to criminally possess stolen property.

The case centered on roughly 100 pages of legal-pad pages, many from the creation of a classic rock colossus. The 1976 album “Hotel California” ranks as the third-biggest seller of all time in the U.S., in no small part on the strength of its evocative, smoothly unsettling title track about a place where “you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.”

Prosecutors had said the defendants knew the pages’ chain of possession was shaky but sought to keep and sell them anyway, contriving to fabricate a provenance that would pass muster with auction houses and stave off Henley’s demands for the return of the handwritten sheets.

Through their lawyers, the defendants contended they were rightful owners of pages that weren’t stolen by anyone.

“The next step is building back our reputations,” Inciardi said in a written statement after the dismissal. Kosinski, leaving court, said only that he felt “very good” about the case’s end. Horowitz hugged tearful family members, then left court without commenting.

Henley lawyer Dan Petrocelli, meanwhile, said the musician plans to turn to civil courts.

“As the victim in this case, Mr. Henley has once again been victimized by this unjust outcome,” Petrocelli said in a statement.

One of Kosinski’s lawyers, Scott Edelman, said they also were going to “evaluate next steps.”

The communications that led to the case dismissal weren’t released publicly. But in court earlier this week, defense lawyers said the trove had identified additional potential witnesses and raised questions about some testimony from Henley and others.

Judge Curtis Farber said Wednesday that 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.”

As Edelman saw it, prosecutors “got blinded by the fame and fortune of a celebrity.”

The defense maintained that 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 Horowitz. He, in turn, sold them to Inciardi and Kosinski, who started putting some of the pages up for auction in 2012.

“These are three factually innocent men,” said Inciardi’s lawyer, Stacey Richman.

Henley, who realized the pages were missing only when they showed up for sale, reported them stolen. He testified at the trial that he let the writer pore through the pages for research but “never gifted them or gave them to anybody to keep or sell.”

The writer, Ed Sanders, wasn’t charged with any crime and wasn’t called to testify. He hasn’t responded to messages about the trial.

Defense lawyers said in court Monday that newly produced emails showed that Henley initially suspected someone else before being reminded of the decades-old book project.

The defense said emails also indicated that some Henley lawyers and a private investigator initially characterized the pages’ disappearance as a burglary — and didn’t mention Sanders’ 1979 book contract — because they believed that referring to a burglary would help their cause. The contract, often mentioned during the trial, said the Eagles would furnish Sanders with material, which would remain the band’s “sole property.”

Messages seeking comment were sent to the Henley attorneys involved in the initial 2012 discussions about the lyrics sheets . Another firm that represented Henley in later dealings with the matter, Loeb & Loeb, said in a statement Wednesday that it respects the attorney-client privilege decisions and is “confident that its attorneys acted in accordance with their professional and ethical responsibilities.”

Prosecutors said Wednesday that they repeatedly asked various witnesses to waive their attorney-client privilege, but they chose not to until the past few days.

But Horowitz lawyer Jonathan Bach said that while the defendants were accused of not asking enough questions about the pages’ ownership, “it appears that the failure to do a full investigation lies with the other side.”

Before the case collapsed, the nonjury trial provided sometimes gossipy peeks into the height of the Eagles’ career and the music business.

The court heard the band’s longtime manager lament on a decades-old tape about dealing with “a pampered rock star.” Henley held in his hands aging pages with lyrics-in-the-making for such Eagles songs as “After the Thrill is Gone,” “One of These Nights” and “The Long Run.”

During testimony that stretched across three days, the Grammy-winning singer and drummer recounted highlights from the band’s heyday, such as the writing of “Hotel California.” And he discussed personal low points, including his 1980 arrest after authorities reported finding a 16-year-old girl who was ailing from drug use at his home. It happened as the Eagles were breaking up, and Henley was reeling.

“The band was everything to me, and it’s something I’d been working towards since I was 15 years old. It was my whole world” and “my identity,” he said. “We had accomplished so much in the previous decade.”

In the long run, it wasn’t the end. The Eagles reunited in 1994 and are still touring.

leave a pm or message, i AM elsewhere. will check at varying times

have a painfree nite and peace

prince harry just came in. is sleeping. but he has a slice down the top of his head. inch and a half. no blood. its like it ripped his fur off in that space.

cannot afford vet. houseshare says crazy glue can work as stitches. i belief that would be torture.

if anyone comes by and has had a semi feral cat get a long cut on top of head. let me know. again, no blood. its almost as if something--a fence or animal--ripped a line of fur off his head. but i see no wet which would mean it was an animal. no blood. its like wherever harry snuck into today, it ripped off his fur in a line atop his head.

no one would use crazy glue would they? i just dont think it will get infected cuz i see no red on his scalp which would indicate blood. and its in a place high enuff harry cannot lick it.

we have a friggin news letter to the towns around here. called next door. some rat bastard said they were gonna start poisoning the ferals. they are about 3 or 4 blocks away from us. they never come here. only harry did when i moved in cuz i actively played with him and spent hours with him.

i cannot imagine what took that piece of hair out and left no injuries. not a cat claw. but it would have been he went under some sort of metal wire fence.

just if anyone knows or thinks they know, he is the love of my life. any words would be appreciated. and i no longer belong to cat rescue groups to pay for a vet. hell, i cannot afford a dr or dentist for me. for me, i am hoping sepsis ends the problem.

but not for harry.

When I open PMs to see what latest comments are on a thread dont work anylonger for me.
When I click on the link to the latest comment it just takes me back to homepage,snd it can sometimes be tricky finding a thread.
Hope it gets fixed,does it happen to anyone else?
Thanks.

we get the extra day in february. kinda like: BIG WHOOP.

Where I live, the vet bills are enormous. It’s a bit “rural” and the coyotes get most of the cats. Thus the higher prices. 

Not only that, but they have a new “policy”. If your pet can be “treated”, they will not put them out of their misery.   So, of course in their monetary opinion, ALL pets can be “treated.”

My cats were given to me by a friend who has a family member who is highly allergic. The breed of these cats are known for causing allergic reactions because they have so much dander. 

They were Senior cats and from the same litter. One had diabetes and kidney issues. The other had urinary tract issues. Both began to urinate outside of their litter boxes. The one with diabetes was quite overweight. She also had a certain walk diabetic cats often have. The other yowled at night but not her normal meows. They were odd sounds. Both had arthritis and other issues as they aged. 

I was so furious at this particular vet that has a chain of them, because it was so obvious that they just want to make money. 

I think it’s very cruel to “treat” certain ailments in animals that cannot be cured. It’s stressful enough for many pets to be placed in a carrier and taken to the vet for treatments that are weekly, bi weekly, etc. 

I was so angry I came close to saying “So, where did you find the Fountain of Youth for cats?” 

They were in pain from arthritis, and urinating was painful. There is more, but it’s too difficult to talk about. 

Touching them in certain ways was painful for them. Picking them up was very difficult because I could tell that it was hurting them. 

I found a place online that comes to your home and puts them to sleep. Yes, it was expensive, but the other vets’ ongoing “treatments” would have added to far more. 

They showed up last Monday, the veterinarian and assistant. I walked out to meet them. The first thing the assistant did was give me a big hug. Inside, the veterinarian gave me a hug. 

They were so kind. They put them in my arms when they gave them the shot to put them to sleep. I held them in large towels. They gave the larger cat more to make sure she was completely asleep. They used adult bed wetting sheets and gently placed each cat on one. Then they gave them the “main” shot. 

They went peacefully with no pain. They cleaned up, carried them to the back of their car and told me to spend as much time as I wanted with them. I kissed each of my cats, and said my goodbyes calling them by their many nicknames. I had the option to keep them and bury them here, but I couldn’t have done it because the ground here is too hard. 

They were Seniors when they were given to me. I had them a little over a year. They each had a wonderful life with their previous owner, and they were sweet and fun cats when I had them. 

I will NEVER use this popular vet chain again. 

Don’t BS me about “quality of life”, telling me that my cats can be treated.  

First of all, they don’t like strangers, and this includes YOU. 

Second, even seeing their cat carriers causes them to panic. 

Third, you are sickeningly cruel. Many treatments are painful and YOU know it. 

Fourth, you’re blood sucking attorneys (no offense meant to you, Charon. I know you weren’t, and aren’t, that type) who just want to rack up billable hours.

Fifth, so many people go into credit card debt because of businesses like yours, and then the pet dies anyway. And you KNEW that was going to happen. Now they’re stuck with payments they can’t afford. 

Six, not everyone has transportation available 24/7. 

Seven, you are partly to blame for pets that get turned loose and left to fend for themselves. You refuse to put a pet out of its misery, and many no longer have the means to take care of the pet. 

Eight, many of the catteries aren’t taking anymore cats. 

Nine, the ones I have been to are filled with too many cats, who eat and drink from the same bowls, use the same litter boxes, and exchange respiratory infections and viruses. And you (purposely) don’t always disclose any various illnesses the cat(s) have that people pay for, and take into their homes. 

I know because you lied right to my face about certain cats. 

Ten, you may or may not know this, but others do. You have a bad reputation for not disclosing important health issues about your pets. 

YOU DISGUST ME.