Eagles singer Don Henley is suing to get the handwritten lyrics of the song “Hotel California” back

NEW YORK (AP) — Eagles singer Don Henley filed a lawsuit in New York on Friday seeking to regain his rights to his music. Handwritten notes and song lyrics From the band’s album “Hotel California”.

The civil complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan comes after prosecutors in March abruptly dropped criminal charges in the middle of the trial of three antiquities experts accused of plotting to sell the documents.

The Eagles co-founder confirmed the pages were stolen and vowed to pursue a lawsuit when the criminal case against rare book dealer Glenn Hurwitz, former Rock and Roll Hall of Fame curator Craig Inciardi and rock memorabilia dealer Edward Kosinski was dropped.

“Hotel California”, released by the Eagles in 1977, is Third best selling album of all times in the united states

“These 100 pages of personal songs belong to Mr. Henley and his family, and he never allowed the defendants or anyone else to sell them for profit,” Henley’s attorney, Daniel Petrucelli, said in an emailed statement Friday.

According to the lawsuit, the handwritten pages remain in the custody of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, which declined to comment Friday on the lawsuit.

Kosinski and Inciardi’s lawyers dismissed the legal action as baseless, noting that the criminal case was dropped after it emerged that Henley misled prosecutors by withholding important information.

“Don Henley is desperate to rewrite history,” Kosinski’s attorney, Sean Crowley, said in an emailed statement. “We look forward to filing a lawsuit against Henley to hold him accountable for his repeated lies and abuse of the justice system.”

Inciarte’s attorney, Stacy Richman, said in a separate statement that the lawsuit attempts to “bully” and “perpetuate a false narrative.”

An attorney for Horowitz, who was not named as a defendant because he does not claim ownership of the materials, did not respond to an email seeking comment.

During the trial, the men’s lawyers claimed that Henley gave the lyrics pages decades earlier to a writer he had worked on Eagles’ never-published biography Horowitz then sold the handwritten pages, which he in turn sold to Inciardi and Kosinski, who began offering some of the pages for auction in 2012.

The criminal case was abruptly dropped after prosecutors agreed that defense attorneys were essentially blindsided by the 6,000 pages of communications involving Henley, his attorneys and his associates.

Prosecutors and the defense said they received the materials only after Henley and his attorneys made a last-minute decision to waive attorney-client privilege to protect legal discussions.

Judge Curtis Farber, who presided over the trial that began without a jury in late February, said witnesses and their attorneys used attorney-client privilege “to obscure and conceal information they believed would be damaging” and that prosecutors “appeared to have been manipulated.”

___

Associated Press correspondent Jennifer Peltz in New York contributed to this report.

___

Follow Philip Marcelo on Twitter.com/philmarcelo.