The case against three men charged with stealing Don Henley's notes and handwritten lyrics for the Eagles' Hotel California album was abruptly dropped Wednesday morning by the Manhattan D.A.'s office.
The move came during a hearing where Justice Curtis Farber said that prosecutors had been "manipulated" by Henley and the band's attorneys. He added that during the trial Henley and his lawyers tried to weaponize their attorney-client privilege to “to obfuscate and hide information that they believed would be damaging."
Assistant District Attorney Aaron Ginandes wrote in a letter to the court that Henley and his manager, Irving Azoff, had repeatedly invoked -- against the D.A. office’s “express and repeated requests” -- their attorney-client privilege while taking the stand as witnesses at the trial. But their decision to invoke and later “waive” that privilege “resulted in the belated production of approximately 6000 pages of material” that the defendant’s lawyers should have been given a chance to cross-examine them about.
Charges have now been dropped against-books dealer Glenn Horowitz, ex-Rock & Roll Hall of Fame curator Craig Inciardi and memorabilia seller Edward Kosinki. And it looks like the three might be looking to sue Henley. Inciardi’s attorney, Stacey Richman, told Rolling Stone, “These are three factually innocent men. The question is now … where do these men go to get their reputations back? We’ll be assessing our rights in the wake of the demonstration that these men are factually innocent.”
Meanwhile, Henley has hired a new attorney, Dan Petrocelli, who says, "The attorney-client privilege is a foundational guardrail in our justice system, and rarely, if ever, should you have to forsake it to prosecute or defend a case. As the victim in this case, Mr. Henley has once again been victimized by this unjust outcome. He will pursue all his rights in the civil courts."
If Petrocelli's name sounds familiar, that because he made headlines for his work in the 1997 wrongful death civil suit against O. J. Simpson, as well as representing Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling, and for his role in defeating the U.S. Department of Justice’s attempt to block the merger of AT&T and Time Warner.
Henley and the Eagles have a two-night stand in Chicago on Tomorrow and Saturday.