Zuckerberg Stonewalling in $5 Billion FTC Fine Case, Funds Say

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is trying to get out of giving a full deposition on what he knew and when he knew it about the Cambridge Analytica controversy, according to a group of pension funds suing him.

The tech billionaire insisted on holding an initial deposition in Hawaii, turned over thousands of documents just days earlier, cut the questioning short, and wants to limit any additional session to just two hours, the funds said a court filing Thursday. Their lawsuit says Zuckerberg—facing the risk of personal liability over the data privacy scandal—got himself out of trouble by agreeing to pay a larger-than-necessary $5 billion fine with shareholder money.

“Giving Zuckerberg a definitive end time invites evasiveness, obfuscation and longwinded non-responsive answers,” the filing said. “Zuckerberg will be aware of the ticking clock and force plaintiffs’ counsel into the Hobson’s choice of wasting time to get an appropriate answer or abandoning the unanswered question.”

A company spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

The litigation reflects the wider fallout over the secretive relationship between Cambridge Analytica—a UK-based data crunching firm hired by Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign—and Meta Platforms Inc., at the time still called Facebook Inc. The scandal erupted in 2018, when the social media platform’s stock tumbled on reports that the analytics company improperly got its hands on the personal information of of tens of millions of users.

The consolidated shareholder suit in Delaware’s Chancery Court also targets other former board members, saying they made a deliberate decision to violate the law in pursuit of profits. When the Federal Trade Commission came knocking, Zuckerberg and his “cronies” agreed to have the company pay $5 billion to deflect focus from wrongdoing by the “boy king” himself, one of the court complaints said. Meta also paid $725 million to settle related claims filed in a federal court in San Francisco.

A judge, Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster, let the Delaware case move forward in 2023 to the costly and cumbersome discovery stage, which involves document exchanges and witness depositions. Laster presided over a hearing in early December on claims that former Facebook directors Sheryl Sandberg and Jeffrey Zients deleted emails related to the Cambridge Analytica allegations.

The shareholder attorneys leading the lawsuit said in their filing Thursday that Zuckerberg’s initial testimony Dec. 3 lasted about six hours and 43 minutes, “significantly less than the travel time from Delaware to Hawaii.” A second deposition should be scheduled without any limiting conditions to avoid “further discovery mischief,” the filing said.

The pension funds are represented by Prickett, Jones & Elliott PA, Dilworth Paxson LLP, Scott & Scott Attorneys at Law LLP, Kaplan Fox & Kilsheimer LLP, Hach Rose Schirripa & Cheverie LLP, Robbins LLP, Gainey McKenna & Egleston, Andrews & Springer LLC, Berman Tabacco, and Cotchett Pitre & McCarthy LLP.

Zuckerberg is represented by Potter Anderson & Corroon LLP. The company is represented by Ross Aronstam & Moritz LLP and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.

The case is In re Facebook Inc. Deriv. Litig., Del. Ch., No. 2018-0307, motion filed 12/19/24.