A choose on Tuesday threw out motions by the lawyer basic of the District of Columbia to call Mark Zuckerberg, the chief government of Meta, as a defendant in a privateness lawsuit.
Decide Maurice A. Ross of Superior Court docket of the District of Columbia mentioned in a listening to that Washington’s lawyer basic, Karl Racine, had waited too lengthy to attempt to amend the lawsuit to call Mr. Zuckerberg as a defendant, a transfer that sought to carry him personally accountable.
“The issue I’ve with that is you wait three years,” Decide Ross mentioned, referring to the addition of Mr. Zuckerberg to the case, which was filed within the court docket in December 2018. “What worth does it add to call him? There’s no extra reduction for the shoppers of the district.”
Decide Ross additionally opposed a requirement by Mr. Racine to depose Mr. Zuckerberg for the lawsuit.
Mr. Racine’s lawsuit accused Fb, which renamed itself Meta final 12 months, of deceptive shoppers about privateness on the platform by permitting Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting agency, to acquire delicate information from greater than 87 million customers, together with greater than half the district’s residents.
Mr. Racine tried so as to add Mr. Zuckerberg as a defendant in October, saying he needed to ship a message to all company chief executives that they might be liable for harming shoppers. Mr. Zuckerberg, by being named within the lawsuit, might have been uncovered to monetary and different penalties.
“Our lawsuit is transferring ahead in opposition to Fb,” a spokeswoman for Mr. Racine’s workplace mentioned Friday. “The corporate failed to guard the information of its customers — tens of hundreds of thousands of customers nationally and practically half of all District residents — when Cambridge Analytica acquired and used that information to govern the 2016 election. We’re holding Fb accountable for these reckless actions.”
Fb is on the middle of a number of authorized battles with regulators. It’s the goal of antitrust and shopper safety lawsuits by the Federal Commerce Fee and a number of other state attorneys basic.
Meta declined to remark.
