DLA Piper is being sued by Facebook for representing a fraudster who claimed he owned most of the company.

Paul Ceglia alleged that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg signed a contract with him in 2003 which gave him ownership of 84% of Facebook. Somewhat suspiciously, Ceglia forgot about the deal for several years until 2010, when he popped up and sued Zuckerberg for billions.

When Ceglia's lawyer advertised for other firms to help take the action forward in return for a slice of a potentially huge settlement, DLA signed up. DLA partner Robert Brownlie, the firm's Securities Litigation co-chair, told the Wall Street Journal he had "absolutely 100% confidence" in the Ceglia contract's authenticity. He told the LA Times that he "would not have risked DLA Piper's reputation" if emails between Ceglia and Zuckerberg was bogus, and told the New York Times that anyone "who claims this case is fraudulent and brought by a scam artist will come to regret those claims".

    "The claim was clearly ridiculous. Zuckerberg signed that contract with us."

During the discovery process it transpired that Ceglia, already a convicted conman, had forged the contract and the emails. Apparently not even competently. They contained impossible dates, formatting changes where he had inserted "The Face Book" and telltale marks where he used clips to hang up the fake contract in front of a window so that it would fade to a convincing 2003 shade of white.

Facebook has accused DLA of "malicious and wilful misconduct" and is suing the firm and partners including Brownlie. It claims that they contravened New York law by continuing to represent Ceglia after allegedly being made aware of his forgery by another firm leaving the case.

In a statement which it has not yet posted on its Facebook page, DLA Piper said, "This is an entirely baseless lawsuit that has been filed as a tactic to intimidate lawyers from bringing litigation against Facebook”, and vowed, "We will defend this meritless litigation aggressively and we will prevail”.
 
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Roll On Friday 22 February 15 21:27

You shall not harm Master Faceschmuck, else Piper will show you his mighty House Elf power magic!