Charges Are Dropped Midtrial In 'Hotel California' Lyrics Case

NEW YORK (AP) — From the start, the case was highly unusual: a criminal prosecution centered on the disputed ownership of a cache of hand-drafted lyrics to “Hotel California” and other Eagles hits.

Its end was even more unexpected.

In the middle of trial, New York prosecutors abruptly dropped their case Wednesday against three collectibles experts who had been accused of scheming to hang onto and peddle the pages, which Eagles co-founder Don Henley maintained were stolen, private artifacts of the band’s creative process.

In explaining the stunning turnabout, prosecutors agreed that defense lawyers had essentially been blindsided by 6,000 pages of communications involving Henley and his attorneys and associates. Prosecutors and the defense got the material only in the past few days, after Henley and his lawyers apparently made a late-in-the-game decision to waive their attorney-client privilege shielding legal discussions.

“These delayed disclosures revealed relevant information that the defense should have had the opportunity to explore” when Henley and other prosecution witnesses testified late last month, Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Aaron Ginandes told the court.

With that, rare books dealer Glenn Horowitz, former Rock & Roll Hall of Fame curator Craig Inciardi and rock memorabilia seller Edward Kosinski were cleared of all the charges. They had included conspiracy to criminally possess stolen property.

The case centered on roughly 100 pages of legal-pad pages, many from the creation of a classic rock colossus. The 1976 album “Hotel California” ranks as the third-biggest seller of all time in the U.S., in no small part on the strength of its evocative, smoothly unsettling title track about a place where “you