back to article Man's 'I own half of Facebook' claim branded 'fabrication' by judge

A US judge has recommended that the lawsuit of Paul Ceglia, the New York wood-pellet salesman who claimed he owned half of Facebook, be thrown out because it's a pack of lies. Magistrate Judge Leslie Foschio said that the alleged 2003 contract with Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg - which Ceglia claimed entitled him to half of …

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  1. Code Monkey

    "I own half of Future MySpace"

    If the case had dragged on for a couple more years, Zuck could've just given him 50p and called it quits.

  2. TrishaD
    Joke

    State Your Claim

    "So your claim is that you wrote all of the plays of William Shakespeare?"

    "That's right - and me and the Mrs wrote the Sonnets"

  3. Rampant Spaniel

    I'm no fan of Zuck, but I hope this chancer gets punished. There are people who genuinely do get ripped off but morons like this one deserve all they get. Since he is fraudulently claiming half of facebook, that seems like a fair punishment, you now owe Zuck half of the market cap of FB. Might not be much in a year or two after an appeal but probably more than the value of a sawdust business. Seriously though, how stupid do you have to be to think you can pull a fast one by fabricating documents in word and trying to screw someone will billions in the bank out of half their company. Jesus, he has so much money you couldn't win if you were right.

    1. Stevie

      Er...

      But what if he says he has Aspergers? That gives him a free pass, dunnit?

  4. Tomas K.

    Ya think?

    Does it really take a 155 page report to know this guy is a liar?

    1. Rampant Spaniel

      Re: Ya think?

      The lawyers were paid by the hour so they probably made sure it did.

    2. Mike Moyle

      Re: Ya think?

      "Does it really take a 155 page report to know this guy is a liar?"

      No, but it may take a 155-page document to lay out the facts and reasoning behind the decision in sufficient detail to close off as many vectors as possible for appeal to a higher court and possible overturn of the judge's decision. In learning argumentation, lawyers are trained to build a pyramid one brick at a time and to explicitly reference each brick. Not doing so can lead to appeals based on claims of "unwarranted assumptions" and "unsupported conclusions".

    3. Turtle

      Re: Ya think?

      "Does it really take a 155 page report to know this guy is a liar?"

      No, but that's not really what the report is for.

      This is an official report, so to speak, and lays out the facts in great detail so that it can - as it probably will - be used as a basis for further court and legal action. Any facts not in this report would need to be proved, again, in the new court in which the new case was being tried. I believe that the statements of fact in the judge's finding would be incontestable as a matter of law. (but I am not sure.) So this report makes any subsequent legal proceedings that much less cumbersome, unwieldy, and hopefully less time-consuming of both parties' time (which also reduces legal costs.) It also reduces the demands that any future lawsuits will make on the resources of the judicial system.

      An interesting example of this is the trial in Florida at which Ted Bundy was found guilty of multiple murders: he was allowed to vigorously defend himself during the first phase of the trial, which concerned his culpability for the murders with which he was charged. However, once he was found guilty and the penalty phase of the trial got underway, he was *not* allowed to argue that he should be spared execution because he was innocent: that he committed the murders with which he was charged was at that point a legally-established fact.

      Also, if this report was, as is usual in legal documents, typed using triple-space, it is not *quite* as voluminous as one might think.

      1. Local G
        Facepalm

        Re: "This is an official report, so to speak"

        "Foschio said in a 155-page report."

        If Magistrate Judge Foschio wrote this report, I agree with you that it was 'official'. However, I'm sure about the "so to speak part"

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Trollface

        Re: Ya think?

        '"unwarranted assumptions" and "unsupported conclusions".'

        See, the problem is that the kind of people who spend a lot of time bitching about things on forums don't realize that you can state a case *without* those two things...

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Facepalm

    lmfao

    "But Facebook lawyers brought in forensic experts, who concluded that he had typed the "emails" in Microsoft Word "

    Did the .doc extension give him away?

    1. southpacificpom
      Devil

      Re: lmfao

      Typing emails using MS Word is a serious crime in itself and should be punishable by death.

    2. Lars Silver badge
      Windows

      Re: lmfao

      Perhaps not, but have you ever checked how much "data" is included at the start of a Word document, and that is not only information related to how to display and print the document. People tend to think that a .doc is "what you see is what you get(/save)". I think there was, years ago, a case in the US, where a MP's document revealed it was not written by him but some lobby group.

  6. Mr Young
    Coffee/keyboard

    Claim half of Facebook?

    Jeez - people these days have no shame at all! Whatever next?

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Claim half of Facebook?

    No self respecting person would want to have such an association

    BUT

    would a lawyer even stoop so low as to claim that?

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Outlook?

    MS Outlook uses Word as it's editor, so if he'd used Outlook to write the emails then he definitely would have used MS Word to create the emails.

  9. radiofreeomaha

    Surprised It's Not Suckerberg

    Based on the story headline and the judge's ruling, I thought the claimant was the CEO himself.

  10. Mad Chaz

    Now if they could just apply that same kind of anti-bullshit logic to computer laws ... http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/28/doj_cfaa_update/

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    One more clown...

    ...bites the dust.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: One more clown...

      Optimist, only one hundred millions more waiting in vain. "Sigh".

  12. Stevie

    Bah!

    *I* wrote Facebook. I am also Spartacus and Keyser Söze.

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