A Delaware judge has sanctioned Sheryl Sandberg, Meta’s former COO and board member, for allegedly deleting emails related to the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal.
The ruling stems from a lawsuit Meta shareholders brought against Sandberg and another former Meta board member, Jeff Zients, late last year. The plaintiffs alleged that Sandberg and Zients used personal email accounts to communicate about matters related to a 2018 shareholder lawsuit that accused Facebook executives of violating the law — and their fiduciary duties — in failing to protect user privacy.
The plaintiffs also alleged that Sandberg and Zients deleted emails from their personal inboxes despite being ordered not to do so by a court. In a ruling Tuesday, the Delaware judge overseeing the case found the allegations compelling.
“Defendants disclosed Sandberg’s personal Gmail account, maintained under a pseudonym, that she used to ‘communicate about matters potentially relevant to the claims and defense in this action,'” the judge’s ruling said. “Counsel’s failure to provide a straight answer in Sandberg’s interrogatory responses or when responding to plaintiffs’ questions supports an inference that Sandberg was not using an automatic deletion feature, but rather was picking and choosing which emails to delete.”
In sanctioning Sandberg, the judge raised the legal standard for Sandberg’s affirmative defense, the defense based on facts other than those supporting the plaintiff’s claim. Now Sandberg must prove her defense by “clear and convincing” evidence — not just a “preponderance” of the evidence, a burden that’s easier to clear.
The judge also awarded certain costs to the plaintiffs.
In a statement to TechCrunch via email, a spokesperson for Sandberg said the plaintiffs’ claims “have no merit.”
“All work emails were stored on Facebook’s servers,” the spokesperson said.
At the heart of the courtroom battle are allegations that Meta officials violated a 2012 Federal Trade Commission (FTC) order under which the company agreed to stop collecting and sharing Facebook users’ personal data without their consent. Facebook allegedly later sold the data to commercial partners, including political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica; was also accused of removing disclosures from privacy settings that were required under the FTC’s order.
In 2019, Meta agreed to pay the FTC $5 billion to settle allegations that the company violated the 2012 order. The company has also paid fines from regulators in Europe.
Update: Added a statement from a Sandberg spokesperson.
