First came the lawsuit from a rural New York man with a sketchy past who claimed Facebook CEO and cofounder Mark Zuckerberg promised him half of Facebook when Zuck was an 18-year-old Harvard University student.

Then came the parade of attorneys, one after the other, representing plaintiff-turned-fugitive Paul Ceglia in his suit against Zuckerberg. The lawyer turnstile churned before, during and after a whirlwind of he-said-she-said allegations and even after a forensics examination (PDF) paid for by Zuckerberg showed that the purported contract (PDF) between Zuckerberg and Ceglia was a forgery.

Next came a federal judge's order labeling the contract at issue a fake (PDF) and Ceglia's lawsuit was dismissed. Then prosecutors brought criminal charges (PDF) against Ceglia. Then out of nowhere, Zuckerberg sued many of the lawyers who represented Ceglia, alleging they knew Ceglia's lawsuit was based on "an implausible story and obviously forged documents."

The plot, now five years old, continues to grow even more complicated and bizarre. On the eve of Ceglia's federal fraud trial in March, the wood-pellet salesman sliced off his electronic monitoring bracelet and strapped it to a homemade motorized contraption nailed to his ceiling in Wellsville, New York. Ceglia vanished with his wife, two children, and dog. The 41-year-old remains at large.

But the story doesn't end here. The latest chapter can best be described as sharks eating sharks or, better yet, lawyers eating lawyers.

A New York state judge earlier this month decided that as many as nine lawyers from various high-profile law firms who represented Ceglia must defend Zuckerberg's lawsuit. That decision came weeks before a federal appeals court said that Ceglia was "an individual who has repeatedly demonstrated total disregard for our judicial system."

Back to Zuckerberg's lawsuit targeting Ceglia's attorneys: New York Supreme Court Judge Eileen Rakower ruled that Zuckerberg's lawsuit against the lawyers "adequately alleges" that the lawyers from firms like DLA Piper, Milberg, and Lippes Mathias Wexler Friedman "knew that the contract in issue in the Ceglia Action was forged."

These lawyers being sued by Zuckerberg's lawyers didn't just roll over and die, however. They appealed the decision Monday. Among other things, they said Ceglia passed a lie detector test.

"The trial court mistakenly concluded that 'allegations that defendant deceived or attempted to deceive the court with fictitious documents may be sufficient to state a cause of action for violation of Judiciary Law § 487,' even where the defendants themselves are not alleged to have participated in creating such documents and their client admittedly passed a polygraph exam concerning the authenticity of the documents," one of the firms' appeals said. The firm of Lippes Mathias Wexler Friedman also notes that Ceglia hasn't even gone to trial on accusations that he forged the document. Milberg's appeal is here. The appeal from the firm of DLA Piper is here.

One law firm not being sued is New York's Kasowitz Benson Torres & Friedman. The firm sent a letter (PDF)—which was admitted as evidence in Ceglia's initial lawsuit—to Lippes Mathias Wexler Friedman of Buffalo in 2011. The letter said it was withdrawing as one of Ceglia's law firms because it concluded that the contract at issue was "fabricated."

The story doesn't end here either.

An expert opinion on Ceglia's behalf, from San Francisco-based forensics consultant James Blanco, concluded that the contract Ceglia based his allegations on was "an authentic, unaltered document." (PDF)