Meta Investors Settle Lawsuit With Zuckerberg, Company Officials

A lawyer for Meta Platforms Inc. investors says that his clients have reached a settlement with current and former directors at the company to end a multibillion dollar case in Delaware.

Terms of the settlement, which were reached one day after the trial started, weren’t immediately disclosed. A representative from Meta declined to comment.

The deal would end a legal fight over claims that the company overpaid for a 2019 Federal Trade Commission settlement in order to personally protect Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg. 

The case focused on a $5 billion deal that Meta, then known as Facebook, agreed to settle with the FTC following the company’s Cambridge Analytica privacy issue, in which an outside developer collected personal data from millions of Facebook users without consent. 

Meta shareholders accused the company of overpaying to settle with the FTC so that Zuckerberg would not be held personally liable for the privacy incident. Shareholders were seeking at least $7 billion in damages to be repaid back to the company.