By Tom Halls
WILMINGTON, Delaware (Reuters) – Sheryl Sandberg, the former chief operating officer of the Meta platform, was approved by a judge on Tuesday to delete emails related to Facebook’s trial over the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal, even though the messages will be preserved. was asked for
Delaware Chancery Court Judge, Vice Chancellor Travis Laster, said evidence showed Sandberg used a personal account under an alias and deleted messages that were possibly related to the shareholder lawsuit.
The sanction would make it harder for Sandberg to tell her side of the story and avoid liability at an eight-day, non-jury trial scheduled for April. The judge also ordered him to pay costs related to the approval motion made by shareholders, including the large California teachers’ retirement system known as CalSTRS.
“Because Sandberg selectively deleted items from her Gmail account, it is likely that the most sensitive and potential exchanges were lost,” Laster wrote in his opinion published Tuesday.
An attorney for Meta and Sandberg did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Sandberg argued that she was forthcoming about the personal account and rarely used it for business and that when she did, messages to others were copied so the information would be protected.
The latter imposed a higher standard of “clear and convincing evidence” than a “preponderance” of the evidence for Sandberg’s affirmative defenses, which are her arguments and evidence why she should not be held liable.
The case was brought up in 2018, when it was revealed that Facebook had allowed data on millions of users to be accessed by Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm that worked on Donald Trump’s successful campaign for US President in 2016.
Shareholders sued the company’s directors and officers for allegedly harming investors by repeatedly violating a 2012 consent order with the Federal Trade Commission to protect consumer data.
Shareholders also alleged that the company’s board negotiated a deal to pay a hefty $5 billion fine to the FTC in 2019 so that founder Mark Zuckerberg would not face personal liability. According to court records, Zuckerberg is expected to be ousted for a second time before the trial begins.
In 2023, Laster refused to dismiss the lawsuit, which he said was a “case involving alleged wrongdoing on a really large scale.”
Shareholders also asked Laster to approve Jeffrey Zientes, former President Joe Biden’s chief of staff and who also asked for the use and deletion of personal emails while on Meta’s board. The judge said Zientes’ messages were less relevant because he joined the Meta board after the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018, and was not an officer of the company.
(Reporting by Tom Halls in Wilmington, Delaware; Editing by Leslie Adler)
