One year and four months after his case was filed Paul Ceglia lost his third legal team. The case revolves around Mark Zuckerberg and an alleged contract that would entitle Ceglia to at least half of the now multi-billion dollar company, Facebook, Inc.

Sanctions on Ceglia’s attorneys for not complying with court discovery orders could very well be the main cause of this third rupture. Jeffrey Lake, one of Ceglia’s former attorneys, swore under oath that Mr. Ceglia explicitly told him not to comply with discovery requests on more than one occasion. Ceglia counters that his privacy had been breached and moved on to a new team at DLA Piper. The latest firm has asked for a three week break in order to get the new legal team in shape.

Just as we saw in our post on the fight over the Steve Jobs icon, it is no secret that when an idea gains in popularity everyone wants a piece of the pie. In this case, Ceglia wants at least half.  If the court rules that this contract did exist, Facebook will soon have to cough up what could be billions of dollars.  If not, Ceglia will be spending a long time in jail for creating fraudulent documents and emails.