Paul Ceglia‘s war with Facebook is the ridiculous lawsuit gift that just keeps on giving.
We have covered the inveterate scam artist’s losing court battle for an ownership stake in Facebook time and time again. We can’t help it, because the stuff still being disclosed continues to be so absurd.
Last time we mentioned the case, the court had ordered Ceglia to pay Facebook’s legal bills to the tune of $75,776. But we ain’t done yet.
Yesterday, Facebook lawyers from Gibson Dunn and Harris Beach filed another motion to compel. This time they are seeking information about Ceglia’s suspiciously named secret email addresses, as well as a possible connection to the Biglaw firm that used to represent Mark Zuckerberg’s other arch nemeses — the Winklevoss twins….
Twenty years ago this September, I started law school not knowing anyone there. More importantly, no one there knew me.
Now, mind you, this was at Boston College Law School, where such things aren’t really emphasized. I mean, it’s not like at that school across the Charles, where people like the Winklevii both wear and file suits. At BC Law, which (at least back then) prided itself on being a kinder, gentler law school, it wasn’t really about who you knew, or who knew you. (Yes, one of those whos should really be a whom, but only someone at Harvard would actually say it that way.)
Still, it’s nice to have people know who are you are, and it’s a useful skill to develop for after school, when you need to know how to market your services as a lawyer.
So three weeks after school started, almost everyone knew my name. You see, I had a secret weapon.…
* You’ve got to check out this lawsuit (in case you missed it earlier). An athlete says nonsensical tripe over Twitter, loses his endorsements, and then wants to sue. Yeah, Rashard Mendenhall has the right to say whatever he wants, and we have the right to spend a lifetime calling him an idiot. [Legal Blitz]
* I’m not sure that creating jobs for prison inmates is exactly what the voters in Wisconsin had in mind. [Adjunct Law Prof Blog]
* The Winklevoss twins really justify all the hate I’ve ever had for the trust fund, Final Club set at Harvard. [Dealbreaker]
* When law firms fight back (against News Corp.). [Am Law Daily]
* I’ve never read somebody waxing so poetically about the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. [What About Clients?]
Immigration is a hot topic these days. It was the subject of a recent Supreme Court case, Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting (a rare loss for the Chamber, which fares well at SCOTUS). It’s getting implicated in the LGBT rights movement, as gay and lesbian binational couples fight deportations caused by the Defense of Marriage Act. And as Election 2012 gets underway, we’ll surely be hearing more about immigration in the weeks and months ahead.
As the immigration debate continues, let’s keep in mind the important contributions made to our nation by immigrants. For example, one of our most distinguished federal judges — Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, of U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit — is an immigrant. He was born in Bucharest, Romania, in 1950, and he immigrated to the United States with his family in 1962, at the age of 12.
Chief Judge Kozinski recently sent me a great story relating to his naturalization, which I will now share with you (with His Honor’s permission)….
One of the things you learn as a college president is that if an undergraduate is wearing a tie and jacket on Thursday afternoon at three o’clock, there are two possibilities. One is that they’re looking for a job and have an interview; the other is that they are an a**hole. This was the latter case.
* If the Supreme Court grants cert to the Winklevoss twins, it’ll be time to start paying more attention to this Mayan prophecy. [Legal Blog Watch]
* Michigan’s public defender system is one of the worst in the country. So are we to understand that Thomas M. Cooley Law School, the #2 law school in the country, can’t even produce quality public defenders? [ABA Journal]
* If you’re a student at Liberty Law and can’t figure out that “God’s law” trumps “man’s law” on the final exam, then you are really beyond salvation. [Religion Dispatches]
* So you think you can dance? Well you can’t! Not at the Jefferson Memorial. Mwahaha. [WSJ Law Blog]
* Prominent Skadden partner Sheila Birnbaum, known as the “Queen of Torts,” has been picked as the special mistress master who will administer the new $2.8 billion fund for sick Ground Zero workers. [Wall Street Journal; Main Justice]
* The Tea Party isn’t that irresponsible, right? They’re going to raise the debt ceiling, right? Or is it time to take all my money and put it in my mattress? [Huffington Post]
* House Speaker John Boehner and former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement, now at King & Spalding, have joined forces to fight marriage equality by defending DOMA. Talk about two people who will not be taking their talents to South Beach. [The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times]
* The tax returns of Barack Obama and Joe Biden have been made public. Notes Professor Paul Caron: “It’s amazing how much more politicians give to charity in years in which they know their tax returns will be released to the public (although Biden still tosses around gifts to charity like manhole covers).” [TaxProf Blog]
* DLA Piper promotes 53 lawyers to partnership. For the blue wedge, name all the offices that are getting new partners. [Am Law Daily; DLA Piper (press release)]
* If you were underwhelmed with OCI at your law school, a new service — JD Match, founded by law-firm consultant and blogger Bruce MacEwen — wants to try to match you up with employers ready to hire. [WSJ Law Blog]
* People keep acting like their law firms are hunting for associates expressing discontent. But law firms aren’t as paranoid as Roger Ailes. [Gawker]
* It’s always nice when our nation’s legal system comes to the defense of punk bands. [Los Angeles Times]
* It’s almost time for the anniversary of the historical basis for Texas thinking it’s better than everybody else. [The Defense Rests via Blawg Review]
* Happy Passover to everyone. Don’t forget your blowtorches. [Wall Street Journal]
The Winklevoss twins might be hot -- but their case is not, according to the Ninth Circuit.
If you enjoyed The Social Network, then perhaps you should be grateful to Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. The lawsuit they filed against Facebook and Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, gave rise to excellent entertainment. The movie wouldn’t have been possible without it.
But now the litigation is getting… old. And some people just want the Winklevoss twins to go away. Like three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
In a ruling handed down today, rejecting the Winklevosses’s effort to overturn an earlier settlement with Facebook and Zuckerberg, the Ninth Circuit dispensed some stinging benchslaps. The opinion contains detailed and erudite analysis of both California contract law and federal securities law, but it can be summarized in four words: “Winklevii, STFU and GTFO.” (Feel free to use that in your headnotes, Westlaw and Lexis.)
Who wrote the opinion? None other than the ever-colorful Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, of course!
Let’s see what His Honor had to say — plus learn about additional Kozinski-related and movie-related news….
Watch to find out what some of our subscribers received in their May box!
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The US associate openings we have in law firms are in the usual areas of M&A, cap markets, FCPA / white collar litigation, finance, and project finance. The most urgent of our top tier (top 15 US or magic circle) law firm openings in Asia (among many other firm openings that we have in Asia) are as follows:
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The last time I flapped my wings your way, I tried to make at least enough noise about your mobile phone to make you more than a little bit uncomfortable. I hope I did. If enough of us become anxious enough about the known and unknown unknowns and knowns in our mobile phones, then we can start making wise decisions about how to manage that information and its resultant investigations.
Today, I’d like to put a finer point on the last installment’s topic by asking a question that seemed to catch most attendees off-guard at a conference panel that I moderated last week: is there discoverable personal information in a mobile app? Our panelists’ answer was a uniform “yes” with one stating that, if he had to choose only one type of data that he could discover from a mobile phone, he’d choose app data. Why? Because there’s simply so much of it and because almost all of it is objective – not just user-created like an email – but machine-tracked like GPS, usage duration, log in and log out times, browsed web addresses, browsed actual addresses. Also, most of us seem to have the idea that data doesn’t actually “stick” to our mobile devices the way it “sticks” to our hard drives. Maybe there’s a disconnect based on the fact that our phones are mobile so we assume the data is mobile to?
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Paul Ceglia‘s war with Facebook is the ridiculous lawsuit gift that just keeps on giving.
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