 "Winklevosses launch another legal volley")
The founders of ConnectU, who claim that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg stole the idea for the popular social networking site, filed a petition Tuesday asking the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal in San Francisco to rehear their case challenging the 2008 multimillion-dollar settlement.
Last week, the court declined to throw out the settlement that the ConnectU team had negotiated with Facebook, which was recently valued at about $200 million .
In a 43-page legal document [PDF] , Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss and their former business partner, Divya Narendra, asked for a rehearing of their case based on allegations that they had been defrauded by Zuckerberg over the value of the 1.2 million Facebook shares they received through the settlement.
[caption id=“attachment_2444” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Facebook social network founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg speaks at a press conference. Photo by Kim White/Getty Images “]
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In pushing for a rehearing, the trio argue that the April 11 decision from the three-judge Ninth Circuit panel is in conflict with American case law that holds that settlements procured by fraud are unenforceable.
After word spread last week that the Ninth Circuit had essentially told the twins that they’d have to stop acting like greedy, spoiled brats and accept the original settlement, the Winklevosses were on the receiving end of some heavy online schadenfreude (Narendra has somehow managed to mostly escape the public’s wrath).The latest legal volley seems to respond to those sentiments, with court documents framing the whole affair as a pursuit of justice and not another move for more money:
Regardless of whether or not one thinks that the settlement gaveAppellants “enough,” the fact remains that the settlement was based on the issuance of securities resulting from a settlement in which Facebook perpetrated a garden-variety securities fraud. … ThePanel’s Opinion is so profoundly at odds with federal and state precedent, with dreadful ramifications, that rehearing en banc is required.
An ardent plea, certainly, but the numbers aren’t on the trio’s side. The percentage of cases accepted for en banc review by the Ninth Circuit are extremely low- as low as 2 percent by one tally.