Overview

• The non-jury trial opened this week in the Court of Chancery in Wilmington, Delaware, and is slated to run for eight days.
• Shareholders including individual investors and union pension funds are seeking more than $8 billion to cover fines and expenses from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, notably the $5 billion FTC penalty.
• Defendants besides Mark Zuckerberg include former COO Sheryl Sandberg, board member Marc Andreessen and ex-directors Peter Thiel and Reed Hastings.
• Plaintiffs contend Facebook leaders knowingly violated the 2012 FTC consent order by allowing user data to be harvested without clear consent.
• Under Delaware law, shareholders must prove that the directors utterly failed in their oversight duties, a claim rarely upheld in corporate fiduciary cases.