Meta Platforms investors and company executives, led by Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, reached an undisclosed settlement on 17 July 2025, halting a shareholder trial in Delaware that sought up to $8 billion over Facebook’s past privacy breaches. A lawyer for the plaintiffs told Vice-Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick of the Delaware Court of Chancery that the parties had agreed to resolve the case, prompting the judge to adjourn proceedings on what would have been the second day of testimony. The derivative lawsuit alleged Zuckerberg, former Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and nine current or former directors—including venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel—knowingly allowed Facebook to violate a 2012 Federal Trade Commission consent decree, culminating in a record $5 billion FTC penalty in 2019. Shareholders claimed the board then overpaid that fine to shield Zuckerberg from personal liability, costing the company billions in additional legal expenses tied to the Cambridge Analytica data-harvesting scandal. Zuckerberg had been scheduled to take the stand on Monday, with Sandberg to follow later in the week, but the accord was reached before either testified. Details of the settlement were not disclosed, and Meta—which was not a defendant—declined to comment. The case was viewed as a rare test of directors’ oversight responsibilities under Delaware’s stringent “Caremark” standard.