It discourages potential lawsuits. If companies retaliate by banning entire law firms from accessing popular venues, that's going to discourage people from filing otherwise meritorious lawsuits against the venues. The difference between MSG and your house or your land is that the Nicks don't play at your house.
That's definitely the best argument I've seen, at least it makes a case for a narrow rule against 'retaliation' against officers of the court. Banning 'outspoken critics' though still seems fine to me.
And such a regulation definitely doesn't need to have anything to do with facial recognition - one could imagine such a problematic retaliation being carried out by tons of methods both easy and labor-intensive. A bar could card all patrons and manually check the names (even not even collecting or storing any info) against a list of targeted persons kept behind the bar. An airline could refuse to ticket you if your firm sued them, etc.
James Dolan: "If any law firm in New York takes a client who plans to sue me, then all employees and their families of that law firm will be banned from any event at MSG".
Leaving aside the fact that it is the client suing, the law firm just represents them (as generally, or at least for all intents, is required by law)...
... this is no different to a SLAPP. Whereby Dolan knows that very few law firms are going to be willing to represent a client who wants to sue MSG.
I don't like it but should I be forced to allow lawyers who sued me to come into my establishment? I think the real issue is that MSG is basically a public utility.
> real issue is that MSG is basically a public utility.
This is a weak argument to me. Who needs to go to MSG? I've never been there. It's a private entertainment venue, and most of the tickets there are too expensive for the bottom half of earners to even attend without going into debt.
If you had to renew your drivers license in MSG, needed to enroll your kids in school there, if they held trials in there, if Penn Station itself was under MSG's ownership/control... any of those would be acting like a public utility.
