Still, nothing quite prepared me for reading the sworn affidavit filed on Nov. 2 by Barbara Hart, an attorney at Grant & Eisenhofer. The international firm is providing counsel for the City of Boca Raton Police and Firefighters’ Retirement System, which is currently involved in a lawsuit in Delaware alleging that MSG overpaid for the MSG cable network, and that the Dolan family received unique benefits from the acquisition to the detriment of other stockholders.

Hart said that she attempted to attend a concert at the Garden on Oct. 22, unaware that MSG had instituted a policy banning lawyers at firms currently suing the company. “While at MSG, I was identified as a banned G&E attorney via facial recognition software,” she stated in her affidavit. “MSG employees stopped me and asked for my ID. After I refused to give it to them, they correctly identified me as Barbara Hart.”

Facial recognition software to stop plaintiff lawyers from enjoying live music? What’s next, keeping a movie critic out of theaters after a bad review? And then what? Will law firms add language to their website’s terms of use to stop anyone from scraping attorney photos? Might the bar association retaliate by not allowing lawyers to represent Dolan?

Larry Hutcher and dozens of other attorneys demanded an injunction on grounds that MSG may not revoke tickets without a compelling reason. While MSG defends its policy of forbidding suing lawyers from accessing its grounds as necessary to ensure there is no “disclosure outside proper litigation discovery channels,” the plaintiffs allege this is “absurd” and “nothing more than a flimsy unsupportable pretext to justify the infantile behavior of MSG’s principals.”

On Nov. 14, New York Supreme Court judge Lyle Frank ruled that MSG (and the venues it operates, including Radio City Music Hall and the Beacon Theater) may not deny entry to those lawyers presenting valid tickets, but also that MSG was indeed free to refuse to sell tickets to them in the future, plus revoke tickets up until the moment of being presented at the gate. A few days later, the judge then clarified that MSG could revoke tickets but not blanket revoke them.

That complication unsettled MSG, which then made an emergency appeal, stating in court papers that Hutcher had a law firm colleague buy a WizKid ticket. “Mr. Hutcher clearly orchestrated these events to test the Court’s Order,” stated King & Spalding partner Randy Mastro, adding that Frank’s attempt at a middle ground was “wholly unworkable, unreasonable, and in direct violation of MSG’s private property rights.” (Hutcher is appealing too.)

A New York appeals court quickly modified Frank’s ruling so that it only applies to the specific lawyers who sought an injunction, and has set a schedule for more extensive arguments this month.

Thus far, the PGA Tour has prevented LIV players from competing in major tournaments, provoking antitrust claims from LIV. The PGA has returned fire with tortious interference claims against LIV Golf. The case is now at the discovery phase where the PGA is attempting to pry documents loose from PIF and Yasir bin Othman Al-Rumayyan, the Saudi businessman who runs the fund. Interestingly, the Saudis are now holding up sovereign immunity to shield themselves from discovery demands that include depositions.

The subject of immunity for foreign officials has come up a lot of late. A few months ago, the Supreme Court asked the Biden administration to weigh in on whether to confer immunity to the NSO Group, a controversial Israeli outfit that sells spyware to law enforcement (such as the F.B.I.) and intelligence agencies around the world. On Nov. 21, the Solicitor General returned the answer that these Israelis shouldn’t be immune as mere agents for a foreign state. That opinion came a few days after Biden’s State Department made the separate call that Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince and Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia, was entitled to immunity in a lawsuit over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Where does PIF fit? In a bid to quash a subpoena, the Saudis stress that they are headquartered in Riyadh under a special legal framework administered by the government aimed at promoting economic development. They say they have minimal presence in the U.S. in terms of real estate and employees and add they don’t really control LIV’s day-to-day operations. The PGA Tour asserts that passive investment or not (according to court docs, $2 billion has bought an 85 percent ownership stake), this Saudi group has availed itself of American courts; have $40 billion in public markets in companies including Costco, Starbucks, and Microsoft; and have relevant documents about financial projections, the recruitment of players, and communications with broadcasters and sponsors.

The discovery dispute is now before a California federal court amid quiet chatter of progress on the settlement front between the golf leagues. Any negotiated resolution may still be a ways away, but there certainly is precedent for competing leagues resolving differences and coming together. The NBA, for instance, is actually a result of a 1976 merger with the American Basketball Association following antitrust litigation from players.

To escape Maesa’s clutches, Ess tapped Cooley partner Michael Rhodes, an attorney with a speciality in cyber law whose clients include Kim Kardashian, Meta and Google. Together, the duo have filed a remarkable complaint that goes beyond merely asserting a contract breach. In particular, Ess wants to void the agreement whereby she provided Maesa with the exclusive right to use her name and likeness to promote the haircare brand. Interestingly, Rhodes is pointing to California’s ban on non-compete clauses—the kind that stop workers from joining an employer’s competitor or “engaging in a lawful profession, trade, or business of any kind.” Here, rather innovatively, Rhodes wants to use it to get Ess out of her licensing deal.

There’s always been tensions around this particular 19th century law, with numerous judges wrestling over the years with how to honor the public policy goal of freedom to leave a job while preserving freedom to contract. In the 1930s, the California legislature enacted a follow-up rule that limited personal service contracts to just seven years. Since then, there’s been some famous fights including Gone With the Wind actress Olivia de Havilland against Warner Bros. over the studio’s attempts to extend her exclusive contract and, much more recently, 20th Century Fox vs. Netflix, over the poaching of television executives locked into fixed term deals. (The actress won; the streamer didn’t.)

By dressing up a licensing contract as a voidable non-compete, the Ess suit puts a unique spin on this area of law, and attorneys I’ve shown this new complaint (read here) have been floored. If she prevails, they say, the result could unsettle dealmaking across creative industries, not just in Hollywood. Then again, this is an era where lots of enterprising and talented individuals have eponymous brands. Should anyone ever lose the right to send out a tweet or Instagram post under their own name because they’ve sold themselves into social media servitude?

That’s the question, at least, that Rhodes seems to raise in this new action. The complaint repeatedly states that Ess “holds an inalienable right to be free from restraints on her business or trade” (italics are mine), which basically adds up to the proposition that if being an influencer is your profession, no contract can get in the way of your ability to influence.