{"id":8655,"date":"2025-11-21T19:56:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T19:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/don-henley-irving-azoff-beat-lawsuit\/"},"modified":"2025-11-21T19:56:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T19:56:14","slug":"don-henley-irving-azoff-beat-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/don-henley-irving-azoff-beat-lawsuit\/","title":{"rendered":"Don Henley, Irving Azoff Beat Lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tDon Henley and his longtime manager Irving Azoff<\/strong> have won dismissal of a lawsuit over their ultimately unsuccessful prosecution of three men for allegedly trying to sell stolen, original lyrics from the Eagles\u2019 1976 album Hotel California<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\tRare book dealer Glenn Horowitz sued Henley and Azoff for malicious prosecution in February, alleging they manipulated New York prosecutors into charging him and two other innocent men. The criminal case was thrown out midway through trial last year, after Henley belatedly produced evidence relevant to whether or not the Hotel California <\/em>lyric notes were truly stolen in the first place.<\/p>\n

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\n\tHenley and Azoff say they did nothing wrong and that the collapse of the criminal case was merely based on a technicality. A judge in New York court sided with the duo in a Nov. 10 order dismissing the malicious prosecution claims as legally deficient.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere was ample probable cause for the DA to bring a case against Mr. Horowitz; indeed, a grand jury indicted Mr. Horowitz based upon the DA\u2019s independent and years long investigation,\u201d wrote Justice Kathleen Waterman-Marshall. \u201cThe dismissal of the case at trial after complainant Henley produced documents \u2014 none of which were found to exculpate Mr. Horowitz \u2014 did not result from any bad faith conduct on the part of the defendants and, thus, does not change this result.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement to Billboard <\/em>on Friday (Nov. 21), Henley\u2019s attorney Dan Petrocelli <\/strong>said, \u201cThe only malicious prosecution was Horowitz\u2019s own lawsuit, which the court promptly and rightly dismissed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMeanwhile, Horowitz\u2019s lawyer, Caitlin Robin<\/strong>, told Billboard <\/em>that they will appeal Justice Waterman-Marshall\u2019s decision. Horowitz also has a separate malicious prosecution lawsuit still pending against the city of New York. \u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tThe debacle stems from the work of journalist Ed Sanders, who was hired in the late 1970s to write a book about the Eagles. Sanders spent time at Henley\u2019s Malibu home while working on the manuscript, which was never published \u2014 and, according to the rock star, Sanders stole his handwritten Hotel California <\/em>lyrics in the process.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe lyrics resurfaced in 2012 on an auction site. Sanders allegedly sold the papers to Horowitz, who in turn sold them to Rock & Roll Hall of Fame curator Craig Inciardi<\/strong> and memorabilia auctioneer Ed Kosinski<\/strong>. Henley complained about the auction listings to various criminal authorities, and Horowitz, Inciardi and Kosinksi were indicted in New York in 2022.<\/p>\n

\n\tAll three men maintained their innocence, arguing that the lyrics were never actually stolen. The trio instead claimed Sanders legally obtained these notes from Henley in the course of writing his manuscript, so it was completely bogus for them to be charged with criminal possession of stolen property.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe case against Horowitz, Inciardi and Kosinksi went to trial in February 2024, with Henley and Azoff both testifying. But things were thrown into disarray when, weeks into the trial, Henley handed over 6,000 pages of documents that he\u2019d previously withheld under attorney-client privilege. These documents included emails discussing Sanders\u2019 unpublished manuscript.<\/p>\n

\n\tLawyers for Horowitz, Inciardi and Kosinksi all complained that these late disclosures had prevented them from fully exercising their right to prepare a defense and cross-examine Henley on all the evidence. As a result, prosecutors dropped the charges mid-trial.<\/p>\n

\n\tJustice Curtis Farber, who oversaw the criminal case, criticized Henley and his lawyers for using attorney-client privilege \u201cto obfuscate and hide information that they believed would be damaging to their position that the lyric sheets were stolen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHenley\u2019s lawyers strongly disagree with Justice Farber\u2019s characterization of the events. They say Henley had the absolute right to invoke the sacred attorney-client privilege, and that nothing in these documents would have weakened the criminal case against Horowitz, Inciardi and Kosinksi.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis argument appeared to sway Justice Waterman-Marshall, who said during a hearing in the civil lawsuit last month that the \u201cdismissal was based upon the inability of Mr. Horowitz\u2019s defense to be presented with certain information, but there\u2019s no finding that that information was withheld by Mr. Henley or any of the defendants for an improper purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n


\"Billboard
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Don Henley and his longtime manager Irving Azoff have won dismissal of a lawsuit over their ultimately unsuccessful prosecution of three men for allegedly trying to sell stolen, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8656,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[4587,3335,2286,2287,4586,303],"class_list":["post-8655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-azoff","tag-beat","tag-don","tag-henley","tag-irving","tag-lawsuit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8655\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}