Hotel California trial over Eagles lyrics abruptly dropped by prosecutors

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An uncommon felony case over allegedly stolen handwritten lyrics for the Eagles’ traditional rock album Hotel California has been abruptly dropped mid-trial.

Three males had been accused of conspiring to own a cache of lyrics, written on round 100 legal-pad pages, to the American band’s hit music “Hotel California”, amongst others.

Assistant Manhattan district lawyer Aaron Ginandes knowledgeable the choose at 10am on Wednesday 6 March that prosecutors would not proceed with the case, citing newly obtainable emails that protection legal professionals stated raised questions concerning the trial’s equity.

The raft of communications emerged solely when Eagles star Don Henley apparently determined final week to waive attorney-client privilege, after he and different prosecution witnesses had already testified.

The protection argued that the brand new disclosures raised questions that it hadn’t been in a position to ask.

“Witnesses and their lawyers” used attorney-client privilege “to obfuscate and hide information that they believed would be damaging,” choose Curtis Farber stated in dismissing the case.

The accused had been three well-established figures: uncommon books seller Glenn Horowitz, former Rock and Roll Hall of Fame curator Craig Inciardi, and rock memorabilia vendor Edward Kosinski.

All three males pleaded not responsible to expenses together with conspiracy to criminally possess stolen property – their legal professionals stated they didn’t commit any crime with the papers, which they acquired by means of a author, Ed Sanders, who was engaged on an unpublished biography authorised by The Eagles.

Sanders, who was given the paperwork as analysis for his ebook within the late Seventies and Eighties, was not charged within the case.

Prosecutors had stated the three males had been conscious the pages had a doubtful chain of possession however bought them anyway, despite Eagles co-founder Henley’s objections.

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Henley, who realised the pages had been lacking solely once they confirmed up on the market on an public sale web site, reported them as stolen.

He testified on the trial that he had permitted Sanders to borrow the paperwork as a part of his analysis for the biography, however “never gifted them or gave them to anybody to keep or sell.”

It is a considerably underwhelming finish to a trial that had piqued the curiosity of the music world, significantly attributable to Henley’s look as a star witness.

The Eagles’ longtime supervisor, Irving Azoff, additionally appeared as a witness, the place he revealed how the connection between the Eagles and Sanders broke down after they had been sad with the tip results of Sanders’ ebook.

He provided some perception into the band’s infamous breakup in 1980, and likewise concerning the band’s artistic strategies in the course of the Seventies.

Henley apparently most well-liked to jot down songs on yellow authorized pads, whereas his late bandmate, Glenn Frey, opted for white ones.

Azoff in contrast the duo to the protagonists of the 1968 comedy movie The Odd Couple: “Don [Henley] was the guy that ran around and picked up Glenn [Frey’s] empty beer bottles and cigarette butts. It drove them crazy,” he stated. “It’s better they had a neutral place to wreck than one of their houses.”

He stated he had by no means identified Henley to half with any of the authorized pads on which he, alongside Frey, labored out a few of the best-known lyrics within the rock’n’roll songbook.

The trial had been underway since late February.

“The people concede that dismissal is appropriate in this case,” Ginandes stated.