2025-07-17T14:37:03Z
Mark Zuckerberg and Meta execs settled a lawsuit with shareholders over a privacy scandal.
The lawsuit alleged executives failed to comply with a federal consent order.
Terms of the settlement weren’t disclosed in court, according to reports.
Mark Zuckerberg and Meta executives agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by unhappy shareholders over how they handled a user privacy scandal.
The lawsuit, which sought $8 billion in damages, alleged that executives — including CEO Mark Zuckerberg and former COO Sheryl Sandberg — “intentionally” failed to comply with a consent order from a federal regulator, leading the company to pay billions of dollars in fines.
In the lawsuit, shareholders demanded that the company and its executives repay the funds to them. A lawyer for one of the plaintiffs to confirmed to Business Insider that an agreement in principle had been reached with the defendants and would be presented at a later date.
The terms of the settlement were not disclosed in court Thursday, according to Reuters and Law360.
Lawyers for both sides didn’t immediately comment on the settlement to Business Insider.
The agreement between the parties cut short a trial in Delaware Chancery Court, where Zuckerberg was expected to take the stand.
Meta was embroiled in the privacy scandal after Cambridge Analytica, a data firm that supported Trump in the 2016 presidential election, obtained the information of millions of Facebook users.
The Federal Trade Commission sued Meta over the breach in 2018, alleging it missed “red flags” regarding where Cambridge Analytica obtained the data and violated a 2012 consent decree. Meta paid $5.1 million to settle the lawsuit from the FTC.
