Facebook Tells Court Ceglia’s Ownership Case Should Be Tossed

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Facebook’s and Mark Zuckerberg’s lawyers told a federal court yesterday that convicted felon Paul Ceglia’s latest discovery requests should be put on hold, and that Ceglia’s lawsuit claiming a fifty-percent (50%) ownership stake in Facebook should be dismissed.

Lawyers at Gibson Dunn were emphatic that the court should not “perversely reward [Ceglia] for his ongoing efforts to derail the discovery process” by keeping his lawsuit alive.

Perhaps more importantly, they argue, Ceglia’s failure to dispute that emails he sent in 2004 to a then assistant attorney general at the Illinois Attorney General’s office “conclusively proves that the [disputed] Work for Hire Document is a fake.”

Finally, Facebook contends that the court has discretion to dismiss Ceglia’s cased based upon unclean hands:

He has willfully disobeyed this Court’s orders for nine months, tampered with and spoliated evidence (including the Work for Hire Document on which his suit is based, and USB devices), tried to conceal the true StreetFax Contract, and directed his lawyers to disregard court orders.

Six weeks ago, the court sanctioned Ceglia for his repeated failure to comply with discovery orders, order him to pay Facebook and Zuckerberg $76,000 in attorneys fees.

The litigation revealed that Ceglia previously failed to produce apparently relevant, but previously unknown, emails and email accounts related to the litigation.

Photo credit: D. Silliman via screenshot

Read Facebook’s reply memo of law seeking to stay discovery:

Defendants Reply Memorandum of Law in Support of their Motion to Stay Discovery Pending a Ruling on their Dispositive Motions, (Ceglia v. Facebook, Inc., et al.)