From the commence, the scenario was hugely abnormal: a felony prosecution centered on the disputed ownership of a cache of hand-drafted lyrics to “Hotel California” and other Eagles hits.
Its close was even far more unexpected.
In the center of demo, New York prosecutors abruptly dropped their circumstance Wednesday versus three collectibles experts who had been accused of conspiring to cling onto and peddle the pages, which Eagles co-founder Don Henley managed were being stolen, private artifacts of the band’s creative method.
In describing the gorgeous turnabout, prosecutors agreed that defense legal professionals had effectively been blindsided in latest days by obtaining 6,000 internet pages of communications involving Henley and his lawyers and associates. The material was provided to both of those sides only in the final number of days, following Henley and his legal professionals evidently created a late-in-the-match determination to waive their lawyer-client privilege to preserve legal conversations private.
“These delayed disclosures uncovered related data that the protection must have had the possibility to explore” when Henley and other prosecution witnesses ended up on the stand, Assistant Manhattan District Lawyer Aaron Ginandes advised the court docket.
With that, rare guides seller Glenn Horowitz, former Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame curator Craig Inciardi and rock memorabilia vendor Edward Kosinski were being cleared of all the prices, which had included conspiracy to criminally have stolen house.
The circumstance centered on about 100 internet pages of legal-pad pages from the creation of a typical rock colossus. The 1976 album “Hotel California” ranks as the third-most significant vendor of all time in the U.S., in no modest element on the power of its evocative, effortlessly unsettling title observe about a location wherever “you can check out any time you like, but you can in no way go away.”
Prosecutors experienced explained the defendants knew the web pages had a dubious chain of possession but sought to retain and sell them anyway, scheming to fabricate a provenance that would pass muster with auction homes and stave off Henley’s needs for the return of the documents.
By way of their attorneys, the defendants contended they have been rightful house owners of web pages that weren’t stolen by any individual.
“The upcoming move is developing back again our reputations,” Inciardi claimed in a prepared statement after the dismissal. Kosinski, leaving court docket, reported only that he felt “very good” about the case’s stop.
Horowitz hugged tearful spouse and children members, then still left courtroom with out commenting. A single of his legal professionals, Jonathan Bach, reported the situation “should hardly ever have been brought.”
A attorney for Henley, meanwhile, signaled that he just isn’t accomplished with the issue.
“As the victim in this circumstance, Mr. Henley has the moment all over again been victimized by this unjust result,” lawyer Dan Petrocelli stated in a statement. “He will pursue all his legal rights in the civil courts.”
1 of Kosinski’s attorneys, Scott Edelman, explained they also had been heading to “evaluate upcoming methods.”
“The district legal professional in this case bought blinded by the fame and fortune of a celeb,” Edelman reported exterior courtroom, “and that blinded them to the information that they weren’t remaining provided.”
In formally dismissing the scenario, Decide Curtis Farber stated the prosecutors “were seemingly manipulated.” Without the need of naming names, he claimed witnesses and their lawyers applied attorney-customer privilege “to obfuscate and conceal information and facts that they considered would be harmful.” The communications that led to the scenario dismissal weren’t produced publicly.
The protection maintained that Henley gave the lyrics internet pages decades in the past to a author who labored on a under no circumstances-printed Eagles biography and later sold the handwritten sheets to Horowitz. He, in change, marketed them to Inciardi and Kosinski, who begun placing some of the internet pages up for auction in 2012.
Henley, who understood they ended up lacking only when they confirmed up for sale, documented them stolen. He testified that at the demo that he enable the author pore as a result of the files for study but “never gifted them or gave them to anybody to preserve or offer.”
The author was not billed with any criminal offense and hasn’t taken the stand. He hasn’t responded to messages about the trial.
