Eagles singer Don Henley has taken legal action in New York to reclaim his handwritten notes and song lyrics from the band’s iconic “Hotel California” album. The civil lawsuit, filed in Manhattan federal court, follows the abrupt dismissal of criminal charges against three collectibles experts who were accused of scheming to sell the documents. Henley has consistently asserted that the pages were stolen and vowed to pursue a lawsuit after the criminal case was dropped against rare books dealer Glenn Horowitz, former Rock & Roll Hall of Fame curator Craig Inciardi, and rock memorabilia seller Edward Kosinski.
“Hotel California,” released by the Eagles in 1977, is the third-biggest selling album of all time in the U.S. “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,” said Henley’s lawyer, Daniel Petrocelli, in an emailed statement.
The lawsuit states that the handwritten pages are currently in the custody of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, which declined to comment on the litigation. Lawyers for Kosinski and Inciardi dismissed the legal action as baseless, arguing that the criminal case was dropped because Henley allegedly misled prosecutors by withholding critical information.
“Don Henley is desperate to rewrite history,” said Shawn Crowley, Kosinski’s lawyer, in an emailed statement. “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, Stacey Richman, added that the lawsuit attempts to “bully” and “perpetuate a false narrative.” A lawyer for Horowitz, who isn’t named as a defendant in the current suit, did not respond to a request for comment.
During the trial, the defense argued that Henley had given the lyrics pages decades ago to a writer working on a never-published Eagles biography. The writer later sold the handwritten sheets to Horowitz, who then sold them to Inciardi and Kosinski. The latter began auctioning some of the pages in 2012. The criminal case was dropped after prosecutors and the defense received 6,000 pages of communications involving Henley and his attorneys, which were disclosed only after Henley waived his attorney-client privilege.
Judge Curtis Farber, who presided over the nonjury trial, noted that witnesses and their lawyers used attorney-client privilege to “obfuscate and hide information that they believed would be damaging,” and that prosecutors “were apparently manipulated.”
In his new lawsuit, Henley seeks a declaratory judgment affirming his ownership of the roughly 100 pages of handwritten lyric sheets. These sheets were the subject of an indictment against the three men in July 2022, with a trial that began in late February but ceased weeks later after the prosecution dropped its case upon discovering “damaging” fresh disclosures.
“Don Henley has filed suit today in a New York federal court for return of property that was stolen from him — his private handwritten notes and lyrics to the iconic songs from the Hotel California album,” said Henley’s attorney, Daniel Petrocelli, in a statement to Variety. “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.”
The lyric sheets are currently in possession of the New York County District Attorney, which was investigating how defendants Edward Kosinski and Craig Inciardi acquired them. Henley is demanding a court declaration that he is the sheets’ lawful owner and that they should be returned to him.
The complaint details how Henley discovered his manuscripts were missing after Kosinski put up four lyric sheets for auction in 2012. Kosinski claimed he had obtained the pages from Ed Sanders, who the Eagles hired in 1979 to write a book about the group that never materialized. Sanders allegedly held onto Henley’s materials and sold five pads in 2007 to book dealer Glenn Horowitz, who then sold them to Kosinski and Inciardi in 2012. In the years that followed, Kosinski and Inciardi allegedly attempted to ransom the pages back to Henley, whose representatives notified law enforcement. The NYPD subsequently seized roughly 100 pages from Kosinski’s home and various auctions.
“Henley now seeks the return of these lyric sheets from the DANY under New York law, which requires him to provide ‘satisfactory proof of his title,'” reads the complaint. “Because Kosinski and Inciardi have also claimed title over Henley’s lyric sheets, the issue must be decided in a civil court with appropriate jurisdiction. Henley therefore seeks a declaration from this Court that he is the lawful owner of his seized lyric sheets to provide the ‘satisfactory proof of his title’ that will facilitate the District Attorney’s return of his property.”
In the previous trial that ended in March, Inciardi and Kosinski were listed as defendants alongside Horowitz, who is not named in the most recent suit. The defendants initially claimed that the author had acquired the documents without expectation of return and that their purchase of the lyrics from the would-be biographer was legal.
Eagles singer Don Henley is seeking the return of his handwritten notes and song lyrics from the band’s iconic “Hotel California” album, according to a lawsuit filed Friday in New York. The federal court civil complaint is the second attempt to claim the documents. In March, prosecutors dropped criminal charges midway through a trial against three collectibles experts accused of trying to sell the items.
Henley claims the pages were stolen. He said he would pursue a civil remedy when the criminal case was dropped against rare books dealer Glenn Horowitz, former Rock & Roll Hall of Fame curator Craig Inciardi, and rock memorabilia seller Edward Kosinski.
“Hotel California” was released by the Eagles in 1977 and is the third-biggest selling album of all time in the U.S. “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,” said Henley’s lawyer, Daniel Petrocelli, in an emailed statement to the Associated Press.
Kosinski and Inciardi’s attorneys dismissed the legal action as baseless, noting the criminal case was dropped after it was determined that Henley misled prosecutors by withholding critical information. “Don Henley is desperate to rewrite history,” said Shawn Crowley, Kosinski’s lawyer, in an emailed statement. “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, Stacey Richman, said in a separate statement that the lawsuit attempts to “bully” and “perpetuate a false narrative.” A lawyer for Horowitz didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.
Three collectors conspired to sell the handwritten lyrics of The Eagles’ hit “Hotel California” back to the legendary rock band’s frontman in a scheme to make thousands off the “stolen” manuscripts, Manhattan prosecutors charged at the start of their trial. Rare-books dealer Glenn Horowitz, ex-Rock & Roll Hall of Fame curator Craig Inciardi, and memorabilia seller Edward Kosinski allegedly repeatedly gave Eagles co-founder Don Henley the runaround when he asked for the return of the lyrics, which prosecutors said were stolen from him decades ago.
“The defendants were not businessmen acting in good faith, but criminal actors who tried to profit from property they knew to be stolen,” Assistant District Attorney Nicolas Penfold said during opening statements in Manhattan Supreme Court. He described the trio as “criminal actors who deceive and manipulate to frustrate Don Henley’s just efforts to recover his stolen property and forestall legal accountability.” The three face charges of conspiracy to possess stolen property and various other offenses at the non-jury trial.
Prosecutors alleged that Henley’s rough draft of the 1977 single was the cherry-on-top of a trove of documents — that included at least 15 notepads and 100 other pages of the singer’s handwritten lyrics — taken from his Malibu home. Raw copies of hits like “Life in the Fast Lane” and “New Kid in Town” were also included in the looted documents.
In 2005, Horowitz, a mega-star rare books dealer who has brokered sales of Vladimir Nabokov and William Faulkner’s literary estates, had purchased the lyric sheets from Ed Sanders, a renowned writer who had been working on an Eagles’ biography that was never published, for $50,000, prosecutors said. Horowitz eventually passed off the notepads to Inciardi and Kosinski for $65,000 in 2012 — which led Kosinski to list four lyric-pages of “Hotel California” on his memorabilia website, Gotta Have Rock and Roll, according to the Manhattan DA’s Office.
Henley — who is expected to testify at trial — caught wind of Kosinski’s auction and agreed to purchase the allegedly stolen lyrics for $8,500 in May 2012. He thought that was the end of the ordeal — but Henley later discovered handwritten notes of “Life in the Fast Lane” had popped up at auction at Sotheby’s in 2014 — in what prosecutors said was another batch of stolen lyric-pages. This time, Henley was allegedly offered the chance to purchase the pages for $12,000 but he refused, according to prosecutors. The sale never found a buyer.
Meanwhile, Inciardi and Kosinski allegedly tried selling through Sotheby’s again — this time in a private sale agreement in January 2016 — but Henley’s lawyers contacted the auction house and told them the lyrics were stolen and demanded their return. The Eagles star then was given an ultimatum — either move forward with the auction and split the profits or buy them back for $90,000. After refusing, Henley filed police charges and authorities began seizing the alleged stolen manuscripts from Sotheby’s and Kosinski’s New Jersey home.
District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office filed an indictment in 2022, with all three defendants pleading not guilty. Horowitz’s attorney, Jonathan Bach, argued that his client wasn’t interested in a “get rich scheme” that would throw decades of his work away. “If Glenn Horowitz thought these pads were stolen, why risk his career for a mere $15,000?” he said, referring to the amount his client netted off the sale of the lyrics.
Kosinski’s attorney, Matthew Laroche, claimed that his client didn’t believe that the lyrics had been stolen when he bought them. “If a celebrity tells you that the property is theirs and you don’t give it back, then according to the people, you are committing the crime of stolen possession of property,” Laroche said, adding that he was planning to file a motion to dismiss the case at the end of the trial.
Stacey Richman, Inciardi’s attorney, said she was hopeful that prosecutors would be the ones “apologizing” to her client by the time the trial wraps. “This case is a case about context. The people have accused three innocent men of a crime that never occurred,” Richman argued to Judge Curtis Farber, who is presiding over the case.
Prosecutors said that when Henley’s lawyer was trying to track down the lyrics’ trajectory since going missing, Horowitz and Inciardi fabricated tales about how Sanders had come to acquire the documents. One plot line Horowitz suggested to Sanders was that Eagles co-founder Glenn Frey, who died in 2016, was the one who gave him the files, according to the DA’s Office. “If Frey, he, alas is dead and identifying him as the [sic] source would make this go away one and for all. Your thoughts, please?” Horowitz allegedly wrote in a Feb. 22, 2017 email.
In another email, Inciardi suggested Horowitz blame his age for forgetting the origins of how he acquired the lyrics, prosecutors said. “It was about 35 years ago and my memory is getting foggy!” Inciardi wrote, to which Horowitz responded, “He won’t go for that.”
Irving Azoff, the Eagles’ long-time manager and the first witness to take the stand, testified that Henley “felt like he was being extorted” and decided to file a police report in California after the $12,000 demand in 2014. “[Henley] didn’t know the extent to what else was out there and [would] open a can of worms if he continued to write more and more checks to get his lyrics back,” Azoff, the former Ticketmaster CEO, said.
Azoff later revealed that the Eagles shelled out $75,000 total to Sanders for his botched biography, which left them “very disappointed” — in part because Sanders had threatened to write a magazine story about the band’s breakup in 1980. “Ed had threatened to publish an article about the breakup of the Eagles and this would serve as an accommodation to keep him happy,” he said.
Azoff returns to the stand Thursday. The trial is expected to last at least a week.
Source: Associated Press, Variety, Rolling Stone
