facial recognition
The owner of Madison Square Garden has filed a new legal action demanding access to the phone records of a New York state liquor investigator — the same state official who the company reportedly hired a private detective to tail.
In a petition filed Monday, attorneys for MSG Entertainment (MSGE) asked a New York judge to force Verizon to hand over cellphone records from Charles Stravalle, an investigator for the State Liquor Authority (SLA). The filing says the records will prove MSGE’s allegations that the SLA has unfairly targeted the company with a “sham” investigation over its controversial move to use facial-recognition technology to ban opposing lawyers from its venues.
“The SLA is misusing its enforcement powers at the behest of politically influential lawyers,” MSGE’s attorneys wrote. “Angered and motivated, those lawyers prevailed on the SLA to conduct an inherently compromised investigation of MSG.”
According to MSGE’s filing, already-revealed texts between those same lawyers and Stravalle “show that the investigation was compromised from the start” — and MSGE now wants access to the rest of them.
“MSG needs the phone records it subpoenaed from respondent Verizon to be able to more fully understand how deep this collusion and corruption goes, and how high the deck was stacked against MSG from the start,” the company wrote.
In a statement to Billboard, MSGE’s attorney Jim Walden said: “We believe the incriminating evidence revealed by the communications between the SLA and the plaintiff’s attorneys is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what our motion and subsequent subpoenas will uncover. We look forward to exposing the SLA’s abuses and bringing the facts to light.”
A rep for the SLA did not return a request for comment from the agency and Stravalle. A rep for Verizon did not immediately respond to a request for comment, including whether or not it would comply with the subpoena.
The new filing comes two months after the New York Times reported that MSGE and Dolan had hired a private detective to track Stravalle after he was assigned to work on the SLA’s probe into the company.
It also comes amid an increasingly sprawling legal battle facing MSGE and Dolan, who also own Radio City Music Hall, the Beacon Theater and other live music venues throughout New York City.
The fight began last year when MSGE enacted new rules to ban attorneys who are suing the company from attending events at Madison Square Garden and other MSGE venues. When MSGE began enforcing those rules using facial recognition technology, it drew public scrutiny and backlash from lawmakers like State Senator Liz Kruger, who expressed concern that MSGE’s rules were “discriminatory and retaliatory.”
In November, the SLA began investigating whether the lawyer ban violates state alcohol laws, which require businesses to be “open to the public” — a probe that could result in the revocation of MSGE’s liquor licenses. In January, New York Attorney General Letitia James requested information about the ban, warning that it might violate local, state and federal human rights laws. And in March, state lawmakers threatened to revoke Madison Square Garden’s property tax exemption which is valued at roughly $43 million a year.
Through it all, MSGE and Dolan have remained defiant. In a January television interview in which he threatened to stop serving alcohol at Madison Square Garden, Dolan defended his company’s actions: “If you’re suing us, we’re just asking you please don’t come until you’re done with your argument with us, and yes we’re using facial recognition to enforce that.”
Monday’s new petition is Dolan’s latest legal effort to fight back against the SLA investigation. He previously sued to challenge the validity of the investigation itself, but the case was tossed out in April after a judge ruled that MSGE could not bring such a case until the SLA had actually issued a decision. MSGE is currently appealing that ruling to a state appeals court.
Read the entire petition from MSGE here:
Madison Square Garden chairman James Dolan remains defiant in the face of an existential crisis at 4 Pennsylvania Plaza, where a lawsuit filed by two dozen ticket scalpers has mushroomed into a multi-pronged fight with some of New York state’s most powerful political forces — ostensibly at the worst time possible for the World’s Most Famous Arena.
Dolan is currently facing the revocation of Madison Square Garden’s alcohol license from the State Liquor Authority (SLA), a push by New York state Senate Democrats to revoke a $42 million tax break granted to the Garden four decades ago and an investigation by New York Attorney General Letitia James.
It all stems from a lawsuit filed against MSG in October, after more than two dozen longtime season ticket holders identified by Madison Square Garden as scalpers were told that their Knicks tickets were not being renewed for the 2023/2024 season. The brokers sued, arguing that team officials were booting them out of their seats just as the Knicks were finally getting good (the team is expected to make the NBA playoff this season).
Dolan responded to the lawsuit by barring the broker’s attorney, Larry Hutcher, and all lawyers from his firm, Davidoff Hutcher & Citron, from entering venues owned and operated by MSG. Soon, the policy was expanded to all law firms suing MSG, leading to a lawsuit from Hutcher and outrage from city and state officials.
The policy affects about 90 law firms and is being enforced using facial recognition software at all MSG properties, including Radio City Music Hall, where a mother chaperoning a Girl Scout troupe to see the annual Christmas Spectacular was pulled aside by security and forced to leave the venue after being identified as an attorney working at a firm with pending litigation against MSG. In that instance, the attorney was forced to wait outside while her daughter and friends attended the show.
The lawyer ban is unfolding just months ahead of a key hearing in July when MSG officials plan to ask city lawmakers to renew a special permit required for all 2,500-plus capacity venues to operate in the city — an ask complicated by a current disagreement over whether to relocate MSG’s namesake venue.
Madison Square Garden sits atop Penn Station, a long-in-decline rail station used by passengers coming in from Long Island and New Jersey. MSG bought the original Penn Station in 1960, demolished the above-ground structure and relocated the station below street level. Today, more than 600,000 passengers use the station each day. That’s led to calls from the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) and state officials, including multiple past governors, to move Madison Square Garden and fix Penn Station. As a result, city and state leaders are facing increasing pressure to deny MSG’s request for a permanent permit — and Dolan’s ongoing antics aren’t helping.
In the state Senate, Democrats led by Sen. Brad Hoylman (D-Manhattan) have put Madison Square Garden’s $42 million property tax break on the chopping block over the facial recognition brouhaha. Hoylman wants any revenue created by stripping away the tax break sent to the MTA, an overtly symbolic gesture referencing the MTA’s battle with MSG over the future of Penn Station.
In response, MSG released a statement that read, “It’s interesting that Senator Hoylman is rallying to end governmental subsidies for corporations when just last year he voted in favor of legislation that extends a $420M governmental subsidy for the film industry and currently sponsors legislation to create new subsidies for the musical and theatrical production industry. Madison Square Garden is a significant job creator and an economic leader within both our community and the city. Our tax abatement is no different than the government subsidies that every single stadium and arena in New York City and state receive and in fact, is hundreds of millions of dollars less than most other venues.”
Next came a letter from an SLA investigator notifying MSG that it was considering revoking the liquor license of all MSG-owned and operated venues for violating a city rule that licensed establishments be “open to the public.”
“As a condition of your license your premises must remain open to the public, i.e., groups or individuals cannot be excluded on the basis of criteria that are not directly related to your duties under your SLA license, and that you must exercise a high degree of care and supervision to prevent any violations of the Alcoholic Beverage Control Law and the Rules and Regulations of the State Liquor Authority,” said the SLA in the letter.
Days later, the SLA demanded Dolan stand before the liquor authority and explain why MSG’s license should not be stripped away.
Dolan responded with a press release calling the SLA a “gangster-like governmental organization has finally run up against an entity that won’t cower in the face of their outrageous abuses.”
Dolan’s attorney, Randy Maestro, proceeded to file a Rule 78 petition against SLA — a measure used in New York State court to challenge a ruling or determination by a state agency. In a 47-page filing in New York Supreme Court, Dolan accused the SLA of a long history of corruption and even attacked one the SLA’s investigators, accusing him of racial bias and corruption while serving in the NYPD for 19 years.
The lawyer ban, Maestro wrote, is meant to stop lawyers seeking to “improperly leverage their access to MSG’s venues to craft and develop discovery strategy by engaging in improper communication with MSG employees during pending litigation.” He also argued that the policy “temporarily limits the admission of less than 0.8% percent of New York lawyers, less than 0.03% of the five million visitors to MSG’s venues every year, and less than 0.01% of all New Yorkers.”
A hearing on the SLA article 78 motion is preliminarily scheduled for March, while a decision on the tax break is due April 1 in Albany.
It’s a banner day for New York attorney Kurt Dominic Robertson, who is no longer persona non grata at the world’s most famous arena.
The same goes for the attorneys at Los Angeles law firm Wilshire Law Group, New York lawyer Laura Rosenberg and non-lawyer Ryan Kenneth Randall, a Las Vegas resident representing himself in a lawsuit filed against Tao Group, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the “guy who punched me at 10:30 pm on a Saturday Memorial Day Weekend the police took into custody.”
Robertson and those others are all involved in litigation against Madison Square Garden-owned Tao Group and were barred from entering the Manhattan arena or any other MSG property under a controversial policy enacted by chairman James Dolan last year. But that all changed today when the company announced it was selling Tao Group and lifting “the adverse attorney policy for any litigation currently pending with Tao entities.” MSG paid $181 million for a 62.5% interest in the hospitality group in 2017.
“This is great news,” says attorney Kurt Robertson, who was banned from MSG properties for representing a client in a personal injury lawsuit filed against a Tao venue in Manhattan.
“When I first got the letter about the ban, I thought it was a prank,” Robertson continues. After calling MSG’s lawyers and learning that the ban was being enforced via facial recognition software, he says, “I decided I wasn’t going to test the policy” and allow himself to be made an example of by MSG security staff.
Robertson and other attorneys suing Tao are no longer barred from entering any MSG-owned property, including the Garden, Radio City Music Hall, the Beacon Theater, the Chicago Theatre and the soon-to-open Sphere in Las Vegas.
Attorneys suing other MSGE entities, along with all employees at their law firms, are still banned from entering all MSGE-owned facilities and risk being escorted off the premises by MSG staff if they are recognized by MSG’s facial recognition software.
The controversial rule, affecting an estimated 90 law firms, is currently being challenged by a number of private law firms along with Attorney General Letitia James, who voiced concern in a Jan. 24 letter that any attempts by MSG “to dissuade individuals from filing discrimination complaints or encouraging those in active litigation to drop their lawsuits so they may access popular entertainment events at the Company’s venues may violate state and city laws prohibiting retaliation.”
James also warned that “research suggests that the Company’s use of facial recognition software may be plagued with biases and false positives against people of color and women.”
MSGE stock was up about 2% in after-market trading on the news.
New York Attorney General Letitia James has sent a letter asking Madison Square Garden Entertainment (MSGE) to explain its reported use of facial recognition technology to bar individuals involved in litigation against the company from its venues, the Attorney General’s office said Wednesday (Jan. 25).
The letter cites reports that approximately 90 law firms comprising thousands of lawyers are affected by a policy that MSG Entertainment allegedly put in place, in which the facial recognition tech has been used to identify and bar attorneys with legitimate tickets from venues including MSG and Radio City Music Hall. The letter says the office has “concerns that the Policy may violate the New York Civil Rights Law and other city, state, and federal laws prohibiting discrimination and retaliation for engaging in protected activity.” The letter also says that the office is concerned that such practices could run afoul of laws prohibiting retaliation and that the technology “may be plagued with biases and false positives against people of color and women.”
“MSG Entertainment cannot fight their legal battles in their own arenas,” James said in a statement included in a press release from her office on the matter. “Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall are world-renowned venues and should treat all patrons who purchased tickets with fairness and respect. Anyone with a ticket to an event should not be concerned that they may be wrongfully denied entry based on their appearance, and we’re urging MSG Entertainment to reverse this policy.”
In a statement sent to Billboard, an MSG spokesperson responded to the letter, saying, “To be clear, our policy does not unlawfully prohibit anyone from entering our venues and it is not our intent to dissuade attorneys from representing plaintiffs in litigation against us. We are merely excluding a small percentage of lawyers only during active litigation. Most importantly, to even suggest anyone is being excluded based on the protected classes identified in state and federal civil rights laws is ludicrous. Our policy has never applied to attorneys representing plaintiffs who allege sexual harassment or employment discrimination.”
In the past few months, the New York Times has reported that MSG Entertainment, owned by James Dolan, has begun using facial recognition software to identify a list of attorneys representing clients that are involved in litigation against the company, and is barring not just those lawyers, but all lawyers from their respective firms, from attending concerts or other events at its venues, which include MSG, Radio City, the Hulu Theater, the Beacon Theatre and others. Events at which the policy has allegedly been utilized include games involving the NBA’s New York Knicks and NHL’s New York Rangers, both of which Dolan also owns.
The use of facial recognition technology is legal in the state of New York, though some lawyers who have sued the company claim that using it to bar a list of attorneys with open litigation against MSGE is not. The public outcry has caught the attention of the Attorney General, who is requesting a response both justifying the policy and detailing attempts to abide by the laws outlawing discrimination and retaliation by Feb. 13.
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