Billions claimed from Zuckerberg & Co.: Case settled out of court

Immediately after a lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg and other prominent figures began in a Delaware court over lax data protection on Facebook, the plaintiffs and defendants reached an out-of-court settlement. This was reported by the Wall Street Journal, among others, which explained that the planned hearings had been suspended as a result. The judge congratulated all parties involved and said she would review the settlement. Further details are not known, but the plaintiffs were seeking a total of US$8 billion in damages.

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Damages for data protection scandal? Zuckerberg in court

The defendants were top managers or board members of Facebook at the time when a company called Cambridge Analytica collected data from Facebook users and monetized it. The lawsuit was filed by shareholders of the Facebook group Meta Platforms, who accuse Zuckerberg & Co. of ignoring relevant data protection obligations under their leadership, which they claim caused financial damage to the company. They refer, for example, to a $5 billion fine imposed by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the highest penalty in the agency's history. Additional costs amounting to hundreds of millions of US dollars were added on top of that.

If the settlement is now approved, it could settle the dispute over allegations that Meta paid the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) too much to protect Zuckerberg personally. He and former COO Sheryl Sandberg, Peggy Alford, Marc Andreessen, Erskine Bowles, Kenneth Chenault, Susan Desmond-Hellmann, Reed Hastings, Kostantinos Papamiltiadis, Peter Thiel, and Jeffrey Zients may now be spared from testifying in court. Sandberg in particular caused a stir in the run-up to the trial when she was caught destroying relevant evidence. The proceedings, which may now be terminated prematurely, are known as In Re Facebook Derivative Legislation and bear the reference number 2018-0307-JTL.

(mho)