Eagles bandmates not playing in the same key.

EVEN though the Eagles checked out of a partnership with their guitarist, they're finding they can never leave.

After a legal fight with former guitarist Don Felder stretching back nearly four years, the band lost a critical court ruling and will now have to go to trial.

Felder claims that Don Henley and Glenn Frey conspired with longtime manager Irving Azoff to oust him from the band when the reunited band signed a new rights agreement in 2000. Felder, who was the guitarist from 1974 to 1980, says he was forced into signing new agreements unfairly benefiting Henley, Frey and Azoff.

Felder sued Henley and Frey in 2001 for breach of contract and wrongful termination and sought to dissolve the corporation, Eagles Ltd. He sued Azoff three years later, but dismissed an earlier demand to dissolve the company after the suits were consolidated.

In August 2004, Azoff, later joined by Henley and Frey, tried to arbitrate the matter rather than go to trial. A Los Angeles Superior Court judge granted the request, but Felder petitioned the appellate court to review the order.

Last month, a three-judge appellate panel in the 2rid Appellate District ruled the defendants waived their right to arbitrate by requesting thousands of pages of discovery. A trial date was scheduled for Jan. 31.

Larry Feldman, counsel at Kaye Scholer LLP representing Azoff, said he planned to petition the California Supreme Court, which would put the trial on hold.

Thomas Jirgal, counsel at O'Melveny & Myers LLP representing Henley, Frey and the Eagles corporations, declined to comment. Felder's lawyer, Joel Klevens, a partner at Christensen Miller Fink Jacobs Glaser Weil & Shapiro LLP, said he expects a trial to begin this spring.

Staff reporter Amanda Bronstad can be reached at [phone], ext. 225, or at [e-mail].