The clusterfuck with the ConnectU lawyers being fired by Facebook boggles my mind. I understand what happened, thanks to your excellent explanation, but I'm left wondering how usual is that? Was that something the Facebook lawyers were planning on, or is it more like when you happen to find your opponents Queen sitting out in the open and realize "Hey... I can just take it"?
Sometimes in litigation you get dizzy trying to figure who among scheming adversaries is the biggest snake. That said, on this point, I think it was planned but not originally in any sinister way - from the FB standpoint, at the time it assumed this would simply be settled based on the mediation agreement, it would be natural to remove the attorneys from representing the company that you had just acquired (they would then either keep ConnectU as a wholly-owned subsidiary or they would dissolve it).
Of course, once the fight was on, this firing was a pretty nasty move. Since I assume FB was surprised by the fact that this did not settle, I don't think it was planned from inception from that particular angle, however.
