Banning e-Cigarettes in the Work Place [e111]

Nasir and Matt talk about Facebook's lawsuit against DLA Piper and other law firms accused of furthering a fraudulent lawsuit. The guys also answer, "Can I ban e-cigarettes in the workplace?" Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions. This is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And this is Matt Staub. NASIR: And don’t forget, you can also send in your questions to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness and dotcom is also necessary. MATT: And, sometimes, I put the reflection in different parts of my name. So, I went up towards the end of it for some reason today. NASIR: I didn’t even notice. MATT: Stay tuned for what’s going to happen on Friday. Who knows? NASIR: All right. So, we get to talk about some other law firms here and some other attorneys. MATT: Yeah, you love this type of story because you love every time that bad things happen to lawyers. NASIR: That is definitely partly true, I think, but – I don’t know – I think I’m going to be defending them in this case so go ahead. MATT: Yeah. So, we see Facebook get sued or threatened to get sued all the time. This is the opposite. I guess it’s the exact opposite because it’s Facebook’s suing DLA Piper and other firms and attorneys. This was just filed this week, right? Yeah or I guess last week. It’s a very fresh lawsuit. NASIR: Fresh off the press, and DLA Piper – everyone should know – is a very large law firm, by the way. MATT: Well, DLA Piper, they’ve been in the news a lot the last year, too. They’ve kind of been dropping, shutting down offices, laying off a lot of mid-level attorneys. NASIR: That’s probably true. I mean, a lot of these big firms – since 2008 – have gone through massive downsizing and then upsizing and then downsizing again so that wouldn’t be surprising. But I know they were in the news quite a bit when this whole Facebook lawsuit came up because this guy, Paul Ceglia, he claimed that he owned a majority interest of Facebook. MATT: Yeah. NASIR: And was able to secure representation from DLA Piper and three other law firms, or I think eventually other law firms and other attorneys, but long story short is that this guy was a complete fraud, apparently – which is not too surprising, I suppose. MATT: Yeah. NASIR: So, then these guys at Facebook – after everything was said and done – were obviously not too happy about the lawsuits and, this last week, they turned it around and sued these attorneys for basically representing this Paul Ceglia because they basically conspired with the fraud that he was trying to extort money out of Facebook. MATT: Yeah, what they’re saying is, you know, once information was discovered and that’s a certain point that they were acting in that conspiracy of the fraud that this guy was trying to impose against Facebook. So, once they found out about it, then they’re part of the deal, too. I mean, I kind of like Facebook going after these firms because, if they knew about it and they were just furthering the fraudulent actions of this guy, then why not? They should have to be responsible for their actions. NASIR: Yeah, you don’t often hear about attorneys who file frivolous lawsuits being sued against, especially in such a publicized manner – in this case, a very well-known national law firm – but I haven’t read the complaint and I wish – in fact, I could read it right here. Let’s just pause here for a half-hour and let me read this. MATT: You can do a live reading. NASIR: Okay. I’ll just start reading here. MATT: Start from the caption. NASIR: It’s still loading. Otherwise, I would have. I’m going to bring up the lawsuit here because, okay, it’s Facebook Inc. and Mark Elliot Zuckerberg. MATT: Who is that? NASIR: That’s the CEO of Facebook. The reason I’m looking this up is I want to understand the causes of action. Okay. So, it’s basically for filing a frivolous lawsuit, et cetera. And so, in this case, the lawyers,

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