‘Noose tightening’ on claimant in Facebook case, says lawyer

A JUDGE has given Facebook access to the personal email accounts of a man suing for half ownership of the social networking website and ordered him to explain why he can’t produce documents its lawyers believe are evidence.

Proof that Paul Ceglia’s case is a fraud has been sitting on a Chicago law firm’s email server since 2004, Facebook lawyer Orin Snyder told the federal judge in New York on Wednesday.

An email that Ceglia sent to a former business associate at the firm includes a scanned version of the two-page contract he and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg signed, Snyder said. Unlike the one Ceglia filed, it doesn’t mention Facebook, only a street- mapping database Ceglia had hired Zuckerberg to work on, he said.

“The noose is tightening around the neck of this plaintiff, and he knows it,” Snyder said during a four-hour procedural hearing that had each side accusing the other of dirty tricks.

Snyder said Ceglia had artificially aged his “phony” contract with light and chemicals, backdated computer files and transferred others to portable storage devices, which he’d probably destroyed.

Ceglia’s lawyer, Jeffrey Lake, countered the claim by saying Facebook had tried to “poison the jury pool” by releasing what should have been confidential documents and implied that Facebook had planted damning evidence on Ceglia’s computers, a statement he backed away from after the hearing.

In the end, Facebook gained access to Ceglia’s personal email accounts and additional ink sampling from the contract.

US magistrate judge Leslie Foschio also denied Ceglia’s request for a set of relevant Zuckerberg emails and ordered Ceglia to explain why he can’t produce five portable storage drives that Facebook’s experts believe contain the scanned version of the contract.

Ceglia says he lost them, his lawyer said.

“Asking me to produce them will be like asking me to produce a unicorn or a leprechaun,” Lake said.