Is this the last resort? Per the Associated Press and Variety, Eagles singer Don Henley filed a civil lawsuit in New York on Friday over the now-familiar allegation that his handwritten lyrics and notes for songs on Hotel California were stolen from him. According to his suit, Henley found out about the alleged theft when some of the pages went up for auction in 2012. “These 100 pages of personal lyric sheets belong to Mr. Henley and his family, and he has never authorized defendants or anyone else to peddle them for profit,” Henley’s lawyer, Daniel Petrocelli, said in a statement.
The complaint comes after a criminal trial involving the pages came to an abrupt stop in March. In that nonjury trial, defendants and well-known collectors Glenn Horowitz, Craig Inciardi, and Edward Kosinski each pleaded not guilty to conspiring to possess stolen property. Defense lawyers claimed that Henley gave the pages — with no expectation that they would be returned — to a writer working on a never-published Eagles biography. According to the defendants, Horowitz purchased the pages from the writer and then sold them to Inciardi and Kosinski, all through legal transactions. Prosecution dropped the case days after Henley’s last-minute decision to waive attorney-client privilege, which meant the defense received 6,000 pages of new documents. The trial’s presiding judge said critical information had been withheld and that prosecutors “were apparently manipulated.”
Only Kosinski and Inciardi are named in Henley’s new civil complaint, which reportedly includes an allegation that the pair once attempted to ransom the pages back to Henley. (The pages that Henley wants back so badly are, per his complaint, currently in the custody of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office.) Kosinski’s lawyer said in a statement that Henley is “desperate to rewrite history,” adding, “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 lawyer said in a separate statement that the singer’s complaint attempts to “bully” and “perpetuate a false narrative.” Meanwhile, Henley is due to begin a residency with the Eagles at Las Vegas’s Sphere in September.
