Leisure & Sports activities Regulation
Attorneys, witnesses used privilege to ‘obfuscate and conceal info’ in Eagles stolen-lyrics trial, decide says
Eagles entrance man Don Henley performs on the “Historical past of the Eagles” tour on the Discussion board, on Jan. 15, 2014, in Los Angeles. (Photograph by John Shearer/Invision/The Related Press)
A decide in New York Metropolis has tossed costs of conspiring to own stolen property—specifically, Eagles handwritten lyrics—after band entrance man Don Henley waived attorney-client privilege in the course of the trial, resulting in late disclosure of 6,000 pages of fabric, a few of which may very well be useful to the protection.
Decide Curtis Farber of the trial-level New York Supreme Court docket dismissed the fees Wednesday in opposition to uncommon books supplier Glenn Horowitz and two others on the request of prosecutors, who acknowledged that the disclosure included related info.
Farber tossed the case after testimony by Henley, Eagles supervisor Irving Azoff and attorneys from Manatt Phelps & Phillips and Loeb & Loeb, Law360 stories.
They’d testified {that a} biographer stole the notes from Henley’s barn within the Nineteen Seventies. Emails and different materials launched after the privilege waiver contradicted that model of occasions, in response to the publication.
“Amongst different issues,” Law360 reported, “the emails present Henley and his attorneys acknowledging the chance that the Eagles could have voluntarily given [the biographer] the lyric notes pursuant to a 1979 contract for him to creator a never-published biography of the band. Henley’s crew additionally had possession of Sanders’ unique biography manuscript however by no means produced it, in response to the brand new proof.”
In addition to Law360, different publications with protection embody Rolling Stone, the New York Post, the Associated Press, Entertainment Weekly and the New York Times. The opposite protection doesn’t point out the names of the legislation corporations.
“It’s now clear,” Farber stated, that Henley, Azoff and “and their attorneys, two of which additionally shielded themselves from thorough and full cross-examination by counting on Mr. Henley’s invocation [of privilege], shielded themselves from thorough and full cross-examination,” in response to Rolling Stone.
These 4 witnesses, Farber stated, “used the privilege to obfuscate and conceal info that they believed could be damaging to their place that the lyric sheets had been stolen. This can be a primary confrontation violation.”
Rolling Stone and the opposite publications didn’t determine which attorneys had testified.
Farber stated the disclosure was “jarringly late.” Prosecutors had been “consuming a slice of humble pie,” Farber stated, however they had been additionally “displaying the very best stage of integrity in shifting to dismiss the fees.”
Through the trial, prosecutors alleged that the biographer bought the notes to Horowitz, who bought them to the opposite two defendants, in response to the New York Instances.
Loeb & Loeb stated in an announcement cited by the AP that it respects the attorney-client privilege selections and is “assured that its attorneys acted in accordance with their skilled and moral duties.”
Spokespeople for Manatt Phelps & Phillips and Loeb & Loeb didn’t instantly reply to the ABA Journal’s requests for remark, made respectively in a voicemail and an electronic mail.
Henley’s new lawyer, Daniel M. Petrocelli, informed Rolling Stone and Law360 that Henley “has as soon as once more been victimized by this unjust final result. He’ll pursue all his rights within the civil courts.”
