Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg will be the main witness this week in a lawsuit involving the company’s shareholders for more than $8 billion. It is about accusations of willful violation of the norms of protection of personal data of Facebook users. This was reported by the agency on July 14 Reuters.
The plaintiffs — shareholders of Meta Platforms — claim that Zuckerberg, former chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and other high-ranking officials knowingly allowed a systematic violation of commitments to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) made back in 2012. It was these obligations that required the protection of users’ personal data. As a result of the Cambridge Analytica leak in 2018, Meta suffered financial losses, including a record $5 billion fine imposed by the FTC in 2019.
Shareholders are demanding that Zuckerberg, Sandberg and other executives personally compensate the companies for more than $8 billion, which includes fines and costs related to the scandal. The defendants also include former board members, including Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings. Importantly, Meta as a legal entity is not a responsible party in this process.
The trial will last eight days in a Delaware state court, without a jury. The focus will be on Facebook’s management actions taken at the board level over the past ten years.
