A recent court filing stated that Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Meta Platforms Inc., and Sheryl Sandberg, the departing chief operating officer (COO), are scheduled to respond to questions from lawyers as part of the San Francisco federal court litigation regarding the Cambridge Analytica data sharing scandal.
Meta Executives Will Give Depositions on September
According to a joint filing late Tuesday, attorneys for the plaintiffs and Meta-owned Facebook have agreed that the plaintiffs' counsel can depose Zuckerberg for six hours and Sandberg for five hours as part of the lawsuit, Reuters and The Verge reported.
The parties also concurred that the plaintiffs will get three hours to examine Javier Olivan, the company's chief growth officer who will succeed Sandberg as COO.
As per the filing, the case has depositions set through Sept. 20.
What Did Facebook Allegedly Violate?
Reuters said that the now-defunct British political consultancy Cambridge Analytica and others were given users' personal information by Facebook, according to the four-year-old proposed class action lawsuit.
In 2018, The Guardian reported that the company had collaborated with the Donald Trump campaign team and obtained access to the personal information of 50 million Facebook users, which was then used to profile voters. The outlet also mentioned that the social media giant was also involved in the U.K.'s 2016 Brexit referendum.
Regarding the underlying lawsuit, Facebook has stated that its privacy practices "do not support any legal claims" and are consistent with its disclosures.
The parties' case management statement on Tuesday comes amid the discovery that has been tainted by plaintiffs' claims of misconduct in the litigation.
In a recent sanctions motion, the plaintiffs' attorneys demanded $854,000 in fees and costs from Facebook, Gibson Dunn, and the firm's case-leading partner, Orin Snyder. In a response filing, the company and firm stated that no sanctionable conduct had occurred.
Recent lawsuit attempts by at least one other plaintiff to force Zuckerberg to respond to legal inquiries on the Cambridge Analytica incident were unsuccessful, as per Reuters.
Plaintiffs have collected hundreds of exhibits from the tech giant dating back 13 years during the course of the case's discovery process. Facebook has retaliated against the in-depth inquiry, calling the plaintiffs' actions "constant and continuing overreach" in a court filing.
The Guardian said the lawsuit might shed new light on the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which devastated the company's reputation and resulted in congressional hearings where Zuckerberg was interrogated for hours about Facebook's data privacy practices.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) imposed a record $5 billion fine on the company in 2019 as a result of the scandal, but detractors have advocated for greater legal accountability, pointing out that financial penalties are insignificant for the behemoth company.
Possible Witnesses
According to filings, additional witnesses may be called during the depositions, including platform partnership executive Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, former director of product management Eddie O'Neil, and Facebook privacy officer Rob Sherman.
A witness speaks under oath at a deposition in a civil matter while being recorded exactly by a court reporter. The witness is testifying under penalty of perjury because the testimony was given under oath.
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