{"id":13319,"date":"2025-07-16T04:26:05","date_gmt":"2025-07-16T04:26:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/13319\/"},"modified":"2025-07-16T04:26:05","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T04:26:05","slug":"meta-shareholders-aim-to-haul-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-sheryl-sandberg-to-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/13319\/","title":{"rendered":"Meta shareholders aim to haul CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg to court"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark Zuckerberg is slated to make yet another high-stakes courtroom appearance this week as shareholders seek to hold him accountable for the more than $8 billion that Meta has spent to settle lawsuits over privacy violations.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

The trial, set to begin Wednesday in Delaware\u2019s Court of Chancery, aims to hold Zuckerberg, former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg and other former executives personally liable for the billions the company spent<\/a> to resolve allegations that it failed to safeguard user data.
\u00a0
Shareholders argue that Zuckerberg, Sandberg and former VP Konstantinos Papamiltiadis violated their fiduciary duties by \u201cintentionally\u201d failing to ensure compliance with a 2012 Federal Trade Commission consent order requiring the firm then known as Facebook to protect user privacy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is expected to take the witness stand in a Delaware courtroom later this week. AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

That failure, they say, enabled the Cambridge Analytica scandal <\/a>\u2014 a notorious breach that saw data from tens of millions of Facebook users improperly harvested for political profiling.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Meta is not a named defendant in the suit and declined to comment on the case. Attorneys for the defendants did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday evening.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The case is a shareholder derivative lawsuit, a type of legal action that allows investors to sue company executives or board members on behalf of the company itself.<\/p>\n

In these cases, shareholders argue that corporate insiders failed in their fiduciary duties and caused harm to the company\u2014financial or otherwise\u2014that management has failed to address.<\/p>\n

In April, Zuckerberg was questioned by the Federal Trade Commission about internal communications surrounding Facebook\u2019s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.<\/a><\/p>\n

Meta is facing regulatory scrutiny for allegedly abusing<\/a> its monopolistic power to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg is also named in a lawsuit brought by company shareholders. Getty Images<\/p>\n

The trial in Delaware will further probe Meta\u2019s handling of user privacy with a focus on the company\u2019s knowledge and decision-making in the run-up to the Cambridge Analytica breach.<\/a>
\u00a0
The case has drawn in a number of other prominent figures from the tech and business world who are either current or former members of Meta\u2019s board of directors.
\u00a0
Both sides are seeking testimony from billionaire venture capitalist Marc Andreessen.
\u00a0
Shareholders also want Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings to testify. Former PayPal executive Peter Thiel, former Biden White House chief of staff Jeff Zients and eBay CFO Peggy Alford are on the witness list as well, either for in-person testimony or recorded depositions. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Hastings, Thiel and Zients are no longer on Meta\u2019s board of directors.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to the shareholders\u2019 complaint, the defendants failed to act on multiple \u201cred flags\u201d <\/a>prior to the scandal.
\u00a0
The case highlights the company\u2019s 2019 decision to settle with the FTC for $5 billion after it was accused of violating the 2012 consent order.<\/a><\/p>\n

Former Facebook Vice President Konstantinos Papamiltiadis is another executive accused of violating his fiduciary duty. Bloomberg via Getty Images<\/p>\n

That settlement, the shareholders argue, was approved by a board that disregarded evidence of noncompliance.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In its 2012 consent decree, the FTC ordered Facebook to give users \u201cclear and prominent notice\u201d and obtain \u201ctheir express consent\u201d before sharing information beyond their privacy settings. \u00a0<\/p>\n

At the time of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook allowed third-party apps not only to collect data from users but also from those users\u2019 friends \u2014 without their direct knowledge or consent.
\u00a0
In early 2018, Facebook acknowledged that Cambridge Analytica had improperly obtained data from tens of millions of users. The final estimate was that up to 87 million individuals were affected. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Zuckerberg later issued a public apology, stating the platform had \u201ca responsibility to protect your data.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The fallout was global. In 2019, the FTC announced a then-record $5 billion fine against Facebook as part of a settlement over violations of the consent order. \u00a0<\/p>\n

The shareholder lawsuit stems from the $8 billion that Meta has paid out to resolve claims that it failed to safeguard user data. REUTERS<\/p>\n

A separate investigation by the British parliament concluded that had Facebook taken its obligations seriously under the 2012 consent decree, the Cambridge Analytica breach might have been prevented.<\/p>\n

Shareholders cite that conclusion in their pretrial filings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In their defense, attorneys for Zuckerberg and the other executives claim there is no evidence of wrongdoing. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis evidence, and much more like it, negates plaintiffs\u2019 pleaded portrait of a company indifferent to compliance,\u201d the defense wrote in a recent court filing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Every week, Post columnist Miranda Devine sits down for exclusive and candid conversations with the most influential disruptors in Washington. Subscribe here!<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The lawsuit has been years in the making. Two years ago, efforts to have the case dismissed failed. \u00a0<\/p>\n

At the time, Vice Chancellor Travis Laster, the judge overseeing the case, remarked that \u201cthis is a case involving alleged wrongdoing on a truly colossal scale.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The current non-jury trial will be presided over by Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick. McCormick is best known for repeatedly striking down Elon Musk\u2019s $55 billion Tesla compensation package. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Her rulings have led to discontent in the tech and business world over Delaware\u2019s handling of corporate governance cases.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the aftermath, several major firms \u2014 among them Andreessen Horowitz, Roblox, Dropbox and Bill Ackman\u2019s Pershing Square Capital Management \u2014 have either left Delaware or announced plans to reincorporate elsewhere.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Post has sought comment from Meta, Sandberg, Andreessen, Hastings, Thiel, Zients, Alford and Papamiltiadis.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mark Zuckerberg is slated to make yet another high-stakes courtroom appearance this week as shareholders seek to hold…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[28,2831,10414,2932,3130,12951,12424,1282,1265,12952,12953,172],"class_list":["post-13319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-delaware","tag-facebook","tag-lawsuit","tag-lawsuits","tag-marc-andreessen","tag-mark-zuckerberg","tag-meta","tag-peter-thiel","tag-reed-hastings","tag-sheryl-sandberg","tag-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}