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Written by Tom Hals
WILMINGTON, Delaware (Reuters) – Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:)’s former chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, was acquitted by a judge on Tuesday in connection with deleting emails related to the cases surrounding the Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal, despite being told to keep the messages.
The judge, Vice Chancellor Travis Laster, of the Delaware Court of Chancery, said the evidence showed that Sandberg used a personal account under a pseudonym and deleted messages that could be important in the case. have a share.
The sentence will make it harder for Sandberg to tell her story and avoid being held accountable in an eight-day, non-jury trial scheduled for April. The judge also ordered him to pay costs related to the settlement of penalties imposed by shareholders, which include California’s largest teacher retirement system known as CalSTRS.
“Because Sandberg voluntarily deleted content from her Gmail account, it’s possible that the most intense conversations have ended,” Laster wrote in an opinion piece published Tuesday.
Meta and Sandberg’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Sandberg had argued that she would come through her account and rarely use it for business, and when she did, others would copy the messages to keep the information safe.
Laster set a high standard of “clear and convincing evidence,” as opposed to “a preponderance” of evidence, for Sandberg’s affirmative defense, her reasons and evidence why. he is no longer to be blamed.
The lawsuit was brought in 2018, when it emerged that Facebook had allowed data from millions of users to be accessed by Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm that worked on Donald Trump’s successful presidential campaign. America in 2016.
Shareholders sued the company’s executives and officers for allegedly harming investors by repeatedly violating a 2012 Federal Trade Commission consent order to protect user data.
Shareholders also accused the company’s board of committing to pay a larger $5 billion settlement to the FTC in 2019 so that founder Mark Zuckerberg would not be held accountable. Zuckerberg is expected to be removed a second time before the trial begins, according to court records.
In 2023, Laster refused to dismiss the case, which he said was “a case involving criminal activity on a very large scale.”
Shareholders also asked Laster to acquit Jeffrey Zients, who was President Joe Biden’s chief of staff and who used and deleted his emails while on the Meta board. The judge said that Zients’ messages were less effective because he joined Meta’s board in 2018, after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and was not an official of the company.
