Winklevoss Twins Take Facebook Case to the Supreme Court

Winklevoss Twins Take Facebook Case to the Supreme Court

Despite recent legal defeats, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss have decided to take their feud with Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg all the way to the Supreme Court. The twins, made into household names thanks to The Social Network, have been trying hard to rescind the settlement from their lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg in 2004. The two sides settled in 2008 in a deal worth approximately $200 million today, but have since had a change of heart. In dispute is the market value of Facebook's stock when the two sides settled, an issue that could quadruple the amount of the settlement.


In December 2010 though, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the settlement would stand. "For whatever reason, they [the Winklevosses] now want to back out. Like the district court, we see no basis for allowing them to do so,” Chief Justice Alex Kozinski wrote at the time. “At some point, litigation must come to an end. That point has now been reached.”

Apparently the Winklevoss twins don't agree. On Monday, their law firm released a statement announcing that they would appeal the Ninth Circuit's ruling. "The law firm of Howard Rice announced that its clients, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra, intend to file a Petition for Certiorari with the United States Supreme Court in the ongoing dispute with Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg," law firm Howard Rice announced.

Howard Rice contends that the Winklevii were defrauded by Facebook and Zuckerberg and that Facebook committed securities fraud during the mediation that resulted in the 2008 settlement. Neither the district court nor the Ninth Circuit have sympathized with the twins, making it unlikely that the Supreme Court will even hear the case. The Supreme Court takes less than five percent of cases and generally only takes cases where constitutional issues are at stake.