Leisure & Sports activities Legislation
Legal professionals, witnesses used privilege to ‘obfuscate and conceal data’ in Eagles stolen-lyrics trial, choose 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. (Picture by John Shearer/Invision/The Related Press)
A choose in New York Metropolis has tossed expenses of conspiring to own stolen property—particularly, Eagles handwritten lyrics—after band entrance man Don Henley waived attorney-client privilege throughout the trial, resulting in late disclosure of 6,000 pages of fabric, a few of which might be useful to the protection.
Choose Curtis Farber of the trial-level New York Supreme Court docket dismissed the costs Wednesday towards uncommon books seller Glenn Horowitz and two others on the request of prosecutors, who acknowledged that the disclosure included related data.
Farber tossed the case after testimony by Henley, Eagles supervisor Irving Azoff and legal professionals from Manatt Phelps & Phillips and Loeb & Loeb, Law360 reviews.
That they had testified {that a} biographer stole the notes from Henley’s barn within the 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 legal professionals acknowledging the chance that the Eagles could have voluntarily given [the biographer] the lyric notes pursuant to a 1979 contract for him to writer 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.”
Apart from Law360, different publications with protection embrace 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 regulation corporations.
“It’s now clear,” Farber stated, that Henley, Azoff and “and their legal professionals, 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 data that they believed could be damaging to their place that the lyric sheets have been stolen. This can be a fundamental confrontation violation.”
Rolling Stone and the opposite publications didn’t determine which legal professionals had testified.
Farber stated the disclosure was “jarringly late.” Prosecutors have been “consuming a slice of humble pie,” Farber stated, however they have been additionally “displaying the best stage of integrity in transferring to dismiss the costs.”
In the course of the trial, prosecutors alleged that the biographer offered the notes to Horowitz, who offered them to the opposite two defendants, in response to the New York Occasions.
Loeb & Loeb stated in an announcement cited by the AP that it respects the attorney-client privilege choices and is “assured that its attorneys acted in accordance with their skilled and moral tasks.”
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, advised 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.”
