Wilmington, Delaware, July 14: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is set to testify this week in a rare $8 billion trial where he and other former top executives face accusations of running Facebook as an illegal operation that mishandled user data. The non-jury trial, starting Wednesday in Delaware’s Court of Chancery, stems from the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal that exposed the misuse of data from millions of Facebook users.
The lawsuit, filed by Meta shareholders including union pension funds like California’s State Teachers’ Retirement System, claims Zuckerberg and others violated a 2012 agreement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) by continuing to allow user data to be exploited. Plaintiffs seek reimbursement for fines and damages totaling over $8 billion, including the record $5 billion penalty Facebook paid to the FTC in 2019.
Defendants include former COO Sheryl Sandberg, board member Marc Andreessen, and ex-board members Peter Thiel and Reed Hastings. While Meta itself is not a defendant, the lawsuit accuses its former leadership of knowingly breaching privacy commitments.
Zuckerberg and the others have dismissed the allegations as “extreme,” claiming Facebook implemented oversight mechanisms and was itself deceived by Cambridge Analytica.
The trial also addresses whether Zuckerberg dumped stock—earning $1 billion—before the scandal broke to avoid losses, a charge his team denies, citing a pre-set trading plan.
Legal experts say this could be the first trial testing the difficult corporate law claim that directors failed in their oversight duties—claims that require proving not just mismanagement but willful neglect.
Though the events in question occurred nearly a decade ago, the case resurfaces at a time when Meta continues to face global scrutiny over privacy practices, particularly regarding its AI model training.