


Madison Square Garden is slated to receive the phone records of a State Liquor Authority investigator it accused of “colluding” with lawyers banned from the arena.
Lawyers reached a settlement agreement during a Manhattan Supreme Court hearing Thursday, in which Verizon will turn the records over to the SLA, which will then redact them and hand them to MSG.
The iconic sports venue in May asked a judge to enforce a subpoena for Verizon to turn over the call logs of part-time SLA investigator Charles Stravalle.
MSG claimed Stravalle had carried out a probe of the stadium at the “behest” of lawyers the company banned from its facilities for having pending litigation against it.
Lawyers from MSG, SLA and Verizon spent over an hour hammering out the agreement behind closed doors Thursday, with the help of Justice Nicholas Moyne
Under the terms, SLA will redact the records to only include calls made regarding the probe into MSG.
“The SLA will redact telephone calls associated with numbers of friends and family — people who are not associated with SLA,” MSG lawyer James Walden explained in court.
Once that’s done, SLA will “produce those redacted records to us,” Walden said.
The lawyers said they would put the agreement in writing later Thursday.
The SLA filed administrative charges against MSG in March seeking to strip it of its liquor license over the lawyer ban policy.
MSG’s recent case claimed that the SLA’s probe was “inherently compromised” due to Stravalle’s “cozy relationship” with lawyer Samuel Davis from firm Davis, Saperstein & Salomon — whom he allegedly sent a selfie to and a photo of himself without a shirt sitting next to legendary boxer Muhammad Ali and the words “younger days.”
MSG claimed it needed Stravalle’s phone records to prove the investigation was tainted and show how deep the alleged collusion went.
“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,” Walden said in May. “We look forward to exposing the SLA’s abuses and bringing the facts to light.”
MSG has faced a slew of litigation over its controversial decision to bar lawyers with pending litigation against it from entering James Dolan-owned venues including MSG, Radio City Music Hall and the Beacon Theatre.
In December, a judge ruled that lawyers with litigation against MSG could attend non-sports related events at its facilities.
The ban has also come under fire by state lawmakers and authorities especially after MSG used facial recognition technology to keep certain lawyers out.
Reps for MSG and the SLA didn’t return a request for comment Thursday.